You’re on a business trip when you realize important files you need to work on are on the computer at home. Or perhaps you want to share pictures of the newborn with grandma but don’t want to take the time to upload them.
A new $99 white contraption called Pogoplug promises to bail you out. And unlike other remote computing solutions, Pogoplug is relatively simple and fast to set up and use, notwithstanding a couple of minor activation challenges.
When you plug Pogoplug into your home network router (via ethernet cable) and plug a USB hard drive into Pogoplug, you can remotely access and share files on that drive over the Internet.
You don’t have to load software or muck with networking settings. And despite a few drawbacks — it didn’t work with all of the portable USB drives I plugged in — the device pretty much lives up to its billing. In the netbook age in which folks may not have a lot of storage on the machine they’re traveling with, accessing files from afar may make sense.
•Tap in from anywhere. If you’re in a hotel room and must edit a document left behind at home, you can remotely fetch it onto the laptop or netbook you have on hand, provided you have Internet access. When done editing, you can upload the file back onto the home drive.
You fire up your browser, go to my.pogoplug.com, and log in. Alternatively, you can download software onto your PC or Mac that will let you access files on your computer through Windows Explorer or Mac Finder, just as if they were “local” drives. (You still need Internet access.)
•Sharing. You can designate pictures, music and videos you want to share with friends, family or colleagues. Instead of uploading files to some website, you provide e-mail addresses for each person you want to share with, and Pogoplug will notify them via a link. You can also check a box to bestow uploading privileges to these folks. And you can create an RSS feed so that when you make changes to the folders containing your shared files, the people you are sharing with will automatically get the updates. This might be a neat way to automatically dispatch pix to grandma’s digital photo frame.
Nit: You can only share an entire folder of files.
•Using an iPhone. You’ll be able to access multimedia files (within limits) off the connected drive onto an iPhone, as soon as Cloud Engines receives final approval from Apple to make the free Pogoplug app available in the App Store. In my tests, I listened to an MP3 file on the iPhone that was on the drive connected to Pogoplug. But a video failed to play because Cloud Engines says the iPhone can only play certain types of video formats. Cloud Engines hopes to develop a future work-around. You can also transfer pictures from an iPhone and dispatch them via Pogoplug back to the connected drive. Apps for other smartphones are in the works.
Accessing files on a remote computer isn’t new, of course. But other solutions are often expensive and geeky. There are no fees associated with Pogoplug after the initial purchase, and Cloud Engines has done a decent job of eliminating most hassles.
The product does border on geeky-ness at times, especially if you happen to plug in a drive type that is not compatible. In tech lingo, Pogoplug supports drives formatted with NTFS, FAT32, EXT-2/EXT-3, and “non-journaled” HFS+. The takeaway is that most off-the-shelf drives ought to work, but when one of mine didn’t, a warning message popped up listing the formats Pogoplug supports.
•Room for improvement. Pogoplug is about the size of a large AC adapter. It’s too bad you must use an ethernet cable; there’s no wireless way to use Pogoplug.
You can connect more than one drive at a time, but only via a USB hub.
Another quibble: As part of the initial activation process, you have to type a lengthy alphanumeric code into your computer. But this code is imprinted on a sticker on the Pogoplug itself. That means remembering to jot it down so you have it with you before plugging everything in since Pogoplug might not be right next to your computer.
You can use Pogoplug for backup (by dragging and dropping files onto Windows Explorer or Finder) but there’s no actual automatic backup software included. And Pogoplug does not support Internet Explorer 8 just yet.
Overall, Pogoplug is a useful contraption with areas to improve.
Pogoplug from Cloud Engines
pogoplug.com
Price: $99
Score: 3 stars out of 4
Pro: Simple-to-set-up hardware gives you remote access and lets you share files on external USB drives. Works with an iPhone (when App becomes available).
Con: Not compatible with all hard drive types. Activation code is hard to access. Not wireless
