Ah Cloud storage. It’s the new hotness for the second decade of the 21st Centruy, and there’s definitely somethig to be said for jhaving your data in a place that isn’t in your home or office. Safety of course, comes to mind first, and we recently experienced a massive data loss that ifmore of our content were backed up to the Cloud, we might not have been ht so hard by this malware a Windows laptop (Yea we know, you don’t have to tell us, it was a fluke of weird coincidences) brought on our happy Mac centric studio. In fact, if we had the PogoPlug hooked up and backing up our data, it would have been safe from what took down almost 7Tb of drives and their backups, so Cloud storage is cool for sure.

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Hit the jump for the unboxing video and some more about he Plug de Pogo.

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Relinquishing control over your data, storage limits, and other factors though, make it harder for people like me to give it all tot he Cloud, and this is where the PogoPlug really shines. It brings the best of the Cloud (being able to access and share your data anywhere) and combines it with the control of local storage that you can change, add to, or what have you, at will. Want to add n extra Terabyte? Just buy the drive. No extra monthly fees, and you’re fully in the driver’s seat.

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Newer models can be had with a WiFi router built in, but most people have that already, and this unit can be gotten for a really good price now that it’s not the “latest and greatest”thing. It still works really well for what it does, and gives you an easy way to share files with others over the Net simply by sending people an email with invitation to files or folders, even the entire drive if you so choose.

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There’s also an iOS and Android app that lets you have access to your PogoPlug anywhere you go, and it’s pretty cool, if simple and with less features than I would like. Nonetheless it’s a good thing, and the PogoPlug folks deserve credit for going the extra mile there.

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Access your photos, music, movies and more anywhere in the world with a broadbamd connection, and there’s no complicated network setup or router configuration you have to do, making it easy for almost anyone to set up and use. Send an email to a friennd and he or she instantly has access to your music library, a folder of photos, a work project you’re collaborating on, and… well you get the idea. You can also hook a printer to it, but I haven’t found a need for that and honestly didn’t have the time to try something I knew I would’t use.

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Overall I really like the PogoPlug, and it can be had for a great price now. The newer model, which is a bit more expensive, is still a deal if you need a WiFi router, but we haven’t tested it so we can’t recommend it or know how open and modifiable the router firmware is. A couple of reviews ay Amazon had this to say, in the plus and the minus camp respectively;

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4.0 out of 5 stars VERY simple to use, June 21, 2010

This review is from: Pogoplug Multimedia Sharing Device (Electronics)

I’ve been using pogoplug connected to a 250GB external hard drive for about a month now, and can say they werent kidding how simple this is. It took longer for me to find room around my desk to connect everything than logging into their site download a simple application and off i go. The application creates a virtual drive on your computer that allows you to use it as a normal drive connect straight to the pc. Although they do provide a software to monitor for folder changes to sync to your files i opted for a more robust software. I decided to use SyncBackPro to monitor any changes on folders and sync then from my pc to pogoplug and pogoplug to pc (along w/ many other features). This seems to do the trick nicely. If you have multiple drives connected to your pogoplug you can do active sync which will transfer the files to another hard drive for redundant backups.

The website [...] looks and works wonderfully. Its able to transcode your videos into HTML5 allowing you to view your videos anywhere and pretty much anything. The sharing option is fantastic when working on projects. Only downside is if you share a folder that other party (and given full access) can use up as much storage on your hard drive as they want. There currently is no way to limit how many gigs they can use. It would be best to have a extra hard drive for sharing only in case your sharing.

As a android user they do have a app on the marketplace which recently had a update that really improved upon it. Again since videos are HTML 5 you can view them easily. It does get little choppy on 3G but on wifi works perfectly. Only downside is that you can upload documents/images from your phone to your pogoplug.

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The bad review we included (the worst one actually) but we really disagree and feel this person didn’t have a clue when it comes to simple things.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Great Product Intention, Disastrous Product Development, October 15, 2010

This review is from: Pogoplug Multimedia Sharing Device (Electronics)

Summary:
Good: Easy Setup, Very fast & responsive Technical support
Bad: Dysfunctional, Unreliable, unstable, unpredictable, un-intutive interface, Very slow performance, The ugliest object in shape, form, color in your house.

Details:
- Good:
* Setup took me just a few minutes & once I registered, I was up running and pogoplug started indexing my drive.
* I had to contact Tech support a couple of times & they were very fast & responsive.

- Bad:
* Dysfunctional: I purchased the pogoplug to share the device between my Windows, Linux machine & Blackberry. The Windows were easy to setup, Linux was tough & really requires some in depth technical knowledge. Blackberry worked for only 4 days and the device no longer available in my Blackberry. Per my
contact with Tech Support, they stated that it is a known issue & they are working on a new application. My further finding indicated that this issue is going on for quite a while & pogoplug is working on this for a long time ( a few months plus) as well. Tech Support did not give me an ETA. So currently the pogoplug is useless to my Blackberry.

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Bottom Line? We really like this thing, and think it’s great for many different types of people. If Cloud storage with local control i something that appeals to you, check the PogoPlug out. There are also two other models you might want to look into, the Pogoplug BIZ Media Sharing Device
and the Pogoplug Video Unit USB 2.0 External Hard Drive
If you have a newer WiFi model tell us what you think of it in the comments please!