Verbatim MediaShare Mini (NAS server)

Pros: Includes Free Remote Access (Smartphone, PC etc.), Supports FAT32, NTFS, HFS, HFS+ formatted drives, Upload photo albums to Facebook (Free), Email links to file or photo Albums for downloading, DLNA/uPNP, Samba/Bonjour included. Easy to setup and use

Cons: Improvements to add more features.

Summary: Dear Dong & Review Readers -

Firstly, thank you from the Verbatim team for showing interest in MediaShare Mini. It is always a pleasure to see reviews of our products and understand where improvements can be made. There are however a few points which should be clarified.

(1) Contrary to the original review, one of the main features of MediaShare Mini (remote access over the internet to your files using a PC, Smartphone etc.) does not require payment of $19.99 to Verbatim and is not part of Premium subscription. Also, being able to view your photos in a photo album, play back music or video remotely are also included as part of buying MediaShare Mini, as is being able to upload albums of photos directly to Facebook.

(2) Premium subscription adds additional features such as being able to view photos using CoolIris, Secure FTP, Flickr support and a couple of other items. However, MediaShare Mini does include many other features such as;

- Works with Sonos, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, WD TV, or other DLNA/uPNP devices.
- iTunes server
- Viewing your photos in different modes from MediaShare directly such as Thumbnail, Shuffle, Cover, (similar to viewing albums in iTunes on an iPhone)
- Sharing files with friends through albums
- FAT32, NTFS, HFS & HFS+ formatted drives
- Samba (Windows), Bonjour/AFP (Apple) networking support

(3) While we appreciate the example of how to turn on media streaming, it would be unfair to describe it as oversimplified. Firstly, the review makes it sound cumbersome to have to login to make changes to the MediaShare for deciding what is shared, this is also the case for most if not all NAS devices. However, the important point to note is that while most NAS devices allow a "On/Off" switch for the entire device, whether or not you want to share everything in the one public folder, MediaShare Mini allows complete customization to the folder level (both individual login private folders and public folders) to decide what is available for streaming or not.

(4) The setup process as the reviewer describes requires registration with Verbatim servers. While at the beginning it may add a few more minutes to the setup, it substantially improves the usage experience afterwards. The reason is that unlike other solutions which require substantial networking experience to modify router settings or work with 3rd party remote access services, Verbatim simply allows, after setup is complete, the user to go myverbatim.com, enter the name of the MediaShare Mini, an account user name and password to to be able to gain complete and full remote access to content just as if the person was on their local network. There are other solutions which also provide just as simple a solution but also require some form of internet connectivity to setup. This is a trade off - exceptionally simple & rich remote access experience vs. a few extra steps at the beginning.

(5) Finally, while it is correct to say that technically it is possible to open Windows Explorer, open the Map Drives view, enter the correct IP address (after first locating it) then map the drive, we believe providing a tool to do all of that for the end user automatically is a much better solution.

Again, thank you for the review and for the comments. We do hope though you can also understand through the above our thoughts on how simple MediaShare Mini can be to use and significant features it provides out of the box.

Verbatim Marketing Team