Jack of all trades, master of none

Someday we’ll magically enjoy all our media whenever we want, wherever we want—and without compromises. That day will probably also involve puppies riding rainbows. But until that dream comes true, we’ll play our music and movies over cloud-based services or hardware like Verbatim’s MediaShare network drive. It streams files to local computers and game consoles, exports photo albums to social media sites, backs up your Macs with Time Machine, shares connected printers, and—wait, there’s more!—lets you access your files over the internet from computers and iOS devices. Despite this Swiss Army streamer’s strengths, we were disappointed by its cumbersome setup and the need to maintain a subscription to use MediaShare’s most powerful features.

With its 7-inch square and 2-inch tall aluminum case, the MediaShare looks like the Mac mini’s chunkier, shinier cousin. If only it was as simple to set up. Sure, MediaShare offers many ways for devices to talk to the 1TB hard drive inside: three USB ports (including a convenient front port that automatically imports another drive’s contents), an eSATA connection, and gigabit Ethernet to connect to your wireless router and networked gear.

It looks simple, but MediaShare does a little bit of everything.

But the MediaShare desktop software installer and a quick-start guide don’t do nearly enough to make using the drive easy right off the bat. We had to hunt for information in the sometimes cryptic (and PC-centric) user manual that doesn’t even explain some features, like printer sharing. One thing made clear during setup was that users can subscribe to MediaShare’s premium features for $19.99 annually (a free 30-day trial is included with the drive). Key premium features include accessing your files over the internet, secure FTP file sharing, and the ability to add “unlimited” user accounts. A call to Verbatim confirmed that subscriptions actually allow 25 user accounts; without a subscription, only five accounts can be created.

Once we had our MediaShare running, it backed up and served files quickly and reliably, albeit a little more noisily than we’d like. Volumes can be opened in the Finder through Verbatim’s desktop software, or—by logging in at myverbatim.com—in a browser-based Flash dashboard. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s relatively user-friendly, allowing you to log in from any computer to upload and download files, manage flexible file sharing permissions, create photo albums for Facebook or Flickr, and play DRM-free media. But don’t ditch your Apple TV just yet. Movies must load completely before playback begins, and the Cover Flow–inspired music player is sluggish. Nice as MediaShare’s web interface is, it’s more of a utility than a destination where you’ll want to spend much of your time.

That’s where home streaming comes in. MediaShare streams files not only to your computers, but also to your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and other devices that support the UPnP-AV, DLNA, or Windows Media Connect protocols. Naturally, it also streams to iTunes, so music stored on a MediaShare appears automatically in the iTunes sidebar as a shared library. It works, but it isn’t nearly as flexible as iTunes’ Home Sharing feature. Only audio files can be shared, and you’ll have to open your MediaShare in the Finder or a browser to download and transfer files among multiple Macs. If you’re on the go, you can access files on an iOS device with Mobile Safari, but the MediaShare mobile interface is limited. Files can’t be remotely emailed to other people, and media files—even songs—must be played one at a time.

The bottom line. MediaShare may fit the bill for limited file-sharing needs, but it comes up short as a do-it-all solution for Mac users.