A Personal Server Unchained
Posted by Edward N. Albro | Wednesday, September 08, 2004 5:00 AM PT
When I reviewed the first incarnation of the
Mirra Personal Server earlier this year, I gave the company a hard time because it seemed like their automatic backup device ($400 for 80GB capacity, $500 for 120GB, and $749 for 250GB) should be able to do so much more. It was named a server, but didn't do a lot of the things I expected a server to do, like letting numerous people collaborate on a file.
From the looks of a recent demo of the new Mirra 2.0 software (the hardware hasn't changed), the company has addressed much of the criticism. You can now synch files. That means, if you edit your vacation photos, you can set up
Mirra so that every PC on your home network will get the new versions. You can even invite a friend on a different network to grab your files from Mirra's Web site, edit them, and then synch them to the other PCs on Mirra's network.
Mirra's creators still don't want to allow the personal server to stream audio or video files. That's too bad, but probably not a deal-breaker.
We should have one of the boxes in our offices soon and I'll be eager to see how well the new features work.
your magazines help me so much in my everyday life. thank you....
Can it be used as a server for a website?
@anonymous
No, this isn't meant to be a server for a website. I don't personally own one of these boxes, however it sounds like it uses their own software. If thats the case, then Apache (or IIS if that's your thing ;-) isn't going to be installed.
If you are looking to host a website, any desktop which has constant internet access and a static ip can be used. You can look into this further at dyndns.org.