I don't quite get the negative reviews. I am not sure how these folks where able to write their reviews when they were so obviously unable to read when it comes to the print in both the Quickstart sheet and the Manual stating that this product is not compatible with windows and that it needs to format your hard drive. Yes, I know, Linksys did a firmware upgrade in which it attempted to also give access to windows formatted drives, but I am quite sure that that was never meant as the main operating drive, and they took the support back out of the following firmware upgrades, because people tried to use it as a full-time solution, and then where trashing this product after it didn't run trouble free. Go figure!!!

Once you format your external drive (the device formats it to Linux based EXT3), this thing is ROCK SOLID and doesn't waver, no matter how much stuff you copy/move. I also didn't have an issue with it getting hot; I wonder if it's worse for folks that lay it flat. I used the little stand it came with and have it upright. Last but not least there is the so-called issue of the lack of speed when used in a wifi environment. Yes, the speed sucks, but that is because you (the user) chose to use wifi for convenience rather then a much higher performance cabled Ethernet solution. There is a cost for not having wires everywhere... and that cost is called speed.

To not have to wait forever when putting all my music and photos on the attached drive, I downloaded a free EXT format driver for windows (after the drive formatting was done, just google and you'll find multiple download possibilities), powered down the link and hooked the drive back up directly to my laptop. After a much faster data write, I hooked it back up to the link and restarted that. Now I can read the data from everywhere, and for media streaming the available speed is just fine.

That said, I think I will upgrade my wifi router pretty soon anyway. 54Mbit on my newest notebook is only half of what the link can do, and never mind my old g card in my ancient laptop that connects only with 11Mbits...

A new generation N (vs. the old G) router with the corresponding notebook receiver cards will eventually fully utilize the duplex 100Mbit this device is able to do; of course that will set me back about 100 bucks extra, but there is no hurry. It might be only 50 bucks in another 6 months or so.

All in all, especially if you actually read up on it before hand, this was a near perfect consumer experience for me. The Link delivers exactly what it promises. PERIOD.