It does not offer FTP or media streaming, and it was the only unit I tested that does not support Gigabit Ethernet network speeds. I didn't notice much of a performance difference in my testing, however. Practically speaking, I doubt that network speed will make a noticeable difference to most home office or small office users, unless you're streaming multimedia content or transferring large volumes of files on a regular basis.

NetCenter comes with EasyLink discovery program, which locates the shared disk, maps shared folders that you select, and lets you place shortcuts to them on the desktop. The NetCenter Manager software allows the user to configure the device settings and set up printer sharing.

Disk security was simple and therefore easy to set up. After password protecting the NetCenter console, I used a file-sharing wizard that walked me through creating shared folders, which can be made public or private by assigning a password to each. After you're done you'll probably want to map each user's workstation to the new folder.

Printer sharing involved connecting the printer, clicking on the "Printers and Faxes" icon on the NetCenter hard drive and following the directions.

As with the Iomega StorCenter, my Computerworld laptop had difficulty recognizing and therefore mapping to shared folders on the NetCenter device. I was not able to determine the exact source of the problem, but I was able to resolve the problem by using the same method described in the Iomega section above.