Pogoplug Multimedia Sharing Device

by Pogoplug

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 4 x 10.1 x 7.1 inches ; 1.7 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0033WSDR4
• Item model number: POGO-E02
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (127 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 22, 2009

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Pogoplug is a multimedia sharing device that lets you connect any external hard drive and then access and share your content over the internet. Easily share content, including video and photos, with friends and family with no uploading. Installation takes less than 60 seconds and there are no monthly fees.

Access and share the contents of your external hard drives through the Internet.

The Pogoplug Multimedia Sharing Device gives you the power to broadcast and share your digital life with ease from wherever life takes you. Pogoplug connects your external hard drives to the Internet so you have full access to your content at home. Easily share content, including video and full resolution photos, with friends and family with no uploading. Sharing is as simple as sending an invitation through an automated email link. Pogoplug works across multiple operating platforms and even allows you to stream videos, music and photos directly to your iPhone®, Blackberry, Droid or other mobile device. Installation takes less than 60 seconds and there are no monthly fees.

Setup takes just 60 seconds. Plug Pogoplug into your router, attach an external hard drive, and activate online. View Larger

60 Second Setup

Connecting your Pogoplug takes 60 seconds, and three simple steps. Opening the packaging may take longer than the installation process! Connect Pogoplug to your home network router and your external hard drive, then visit our website to complete the installation and activate the device. No need to configure ports, routers, IP addresses, firewalls, or any other complicated setups.

Pogoplug 101

• Files can be viewed, downloaded or streamed through any popular web browser.
  
  
• Share content, including HD video and full resolution photos, with friends and family with no uploading.
  
  
• Setup takes 60 seconds. Simply plug Pogoplug into your network router, attach an external hard drive, and activate online.
  
  
• No need to change your network configuration or firewall settings.
  
  
• Attach up to 4 external hard drives (or more with a USB hub) giving you almost unlimited storage growth.
  
  
• Includes lifetime service, no hidden fees and no strings attached.
  
  

Pogoplug in Depth

The Pogoplug Multimedia Sharing Device gives you the power to broadcast and share your digital life with ease from wherever life takes you. Here's how it works:

How do you access your content?

• Access and download all of the content on your Pogoplug-connected hard drives from any popular Web browser.
  
  
• Stream your videos and music directly to your iPhone® and other mobile devices.
  
  
• Use Pogoplug just like a drive in your computer. Upload content using Windows Explorer and Mac Finder at home or from anywhere on the Internet.
  
  
• Automatically copies and synchronizes photos, videos, music and other selected content from your PC and Mac.
  
  
• Your email address and user selected password is the only information you need to get secure access to your content.
  

How do you share your content?

• Simple and instant sharing of unlimited amounts of media, including full resolution photos and videos, without uploading files.
  
  
• Supports the playback of videos taken from the most popular cameras, video cameras, and mobile phones.
  
  
• Automatically notifies your friends and family when new content is shared with them.
  
  
• Integrates with your favorite social media websites to always keep people in the loop.
  
  
• Store and share photos and videos directly from your mobile phone.
  
  

The Pogoplug Web Interface View Larger

The Pogoplug Web Interface

1. Navigation pane: Quickly find all of your movies, music, photos and other content across any connected hard drive.
   
   
2. Viewing area: View high-resolution photos, watch movies, listen to music, or simply browse through the contents of your hard drives.
   
   
3. Sharing: Share your content privately and securely, with a single click, with no uploading required.
   
   
4. Social media sharing: Integrates with your favorite social media websites.
   
   
5. User permissions: Allow friends and family to contribute content to select folders on your hard drives.
   

What's In the Box

Pogoplug, Power cable, Ethernet cable, Quick start guide, Limited warranty.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 100 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Stay away from Pogoplug, May 17, 2010

By 

Adam Van Pelt - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pogoplug Multimedia Sharing Device (Personal Computers)

Update (November 2011):

If you need reliable access to your data (mission critical or not), do NOT use Pogoplug. This weekend (which, coincidentally, is the Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S. when many people are hundreds or thousands of miles from home), the Pogoplug "geniuses" decided to update their service to give customers 5 GB of storage in the company's own "cloud." Looks like they're trying to pretend to be a Dropbox or iCloud service now. Well, in the process of doing their upgrade, they knocked the existing Pogoplug service offline. Now that it's back up, I can see my Pogoplug, but my attached storage is nowhere to be seen. Keep in mind that there was NO notice given of any planned downtime. This company is absolutely terrible about notifying their existing customer base about anything when it comes to downtime or planned outages. There are many people with Pogoplugs that are currently having the same problem I'm having; and as of now, there has been no response from the company.

The only solution I've seen mentioned by other users is to power cycle the Pogoplug device. Unfortunately, I'm currently hundreds of miles from home, and even though they've made multiple revisions to their web interface in the last 18 months (most of them not positive revisions), they have yet to add the ability to remotely reboot the Pogoplug. So, I guess I'm SOL until I get back home. It's a shame that I actually thought I could depend on this device and this company and they go and pull a stunt like this over the long weekend with no notice. This company clearly has no idea who it is or what it wants to be; and it's just trying to haphazardly copy everything that others are doing while breaking existing features in the process. I am not a satisfied customer!

Original review from May 2010:

The idea of having the ability to plug multiple USB 2.0 external hard drives into this and see and share the contents without much fuss appealed to me. I've heard Leo Laporte raving about this device so I figured I'd give it a shot because I trust his opinion on tech recommendations, for the most part. I've had this device for just over two months now. I primarily use the Pogoplug to share photos with family, keep a backup of some files, and share files with colleagues. I must say that the web interface is pretty nice, and it has allowed people that I've shared files with to be able to navigate to them without any assistance from me. So, that's pretty straightforward. It's also easy to control permissions for directories on an individual by individual basis (read only/read and write.) That's a plus.

Onto the negatives. . .

I wouldn't rely on this in any "mission critical" environments. I certainly haven't used this for anything that qualifies as "mission critical", but given the issues I've had, I wouldn't rely on this if I did need it for that purpose. When I tried to transfer about 4 GB worth of photos to my mother's PC (she was running the Pogoplug software for Windows--she is using Windows 7), the connection repeatedly timed out during the file transfer. That was annoying because since it's just using Windows Cut/Copy/Paste, there's no option to resume the transfer where it left off. I literally had to browse the folder on her machine that the pictures were going into and compare the file names of what she had vs. what I had on my Pogoplugged hard drive. It turned what would've already been a fairly long process into an even longer process since I had to "babysit" it for several hours. As far as internet connection specs, I have 3 Mbps upstream and my mother has 40 Mbps downstream, so we weren't trying to accomplish this feat on slow connections.

The second issue I've had that has necessitated my continued reliance on Dropbox is that when a colleague tried to transfer several hundred files to me, all of the files appeared to be there in Windows Explorer and on the Pogoplug web interface, but when I tried to work with them, the software I was using wouldn't be able to see anywhere between 2 to 10 of the files. The files were not zipped before transfer -- the folder containing them was simply copied and pasted onto my Pogoplugged drive. The colleague transferring the files to me didn't receive any file transfer errors on their side, but clearly something didn't transfer properly with some of the files even though they all appeared to be the proper size in Windows Explorer (header issue, perhaps?) With this colleague, I've gone back to using Dropbox exclusively to receive files from them and have never had a problem. My colleague has a fiber connection of >30 Mbps upstream and I have 30 Mbps downstream, so he shouldn't have had any bandwidth issues uploading files to my Pogoplug.

I will say that the iPhone app for the Pogoplug is a potential selling point, but Dropbox has an iPhone app as well. The iPhone app for the Pogoplug has not been without its faults, either. I've tried to watch some video clips via the iPhone Pogoplug app and it's hit and miss. Sometimes I can watch the full clip and sometimes my iPhone thinks that the clip is only a few seconds long and stops a few seconds in. I haven't been able to pinpoint the cause of that problem, and refreshing the file list or removing and reinstalling the app hasn't fixed the problem.

All-in-all, I think the Pogoplug is a great idea that's targeting an audience that wants a NAS-type device but doesn't want to drop some bigger bucks for a Drobo. I don't regret purchasing it because I expected there to be certain kinks and quirks with such a relative newcomer to the market. I hope that some of the issues I've had will be addressed in the coming months where possible through software updates to the Pogoplug desktop software for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Being able to "auto-resume" a file transfer where it left off when the connection dropped would be a huge plus, but it would require some work on the developer's part. Perhaps a file transfer queue could sit inside the Pogoplug software and monitor the progress of a file transfer and allow it to be resumed if it failed? I certainly hope the developers will continue to actively improve the desktop software.

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My own cloud computing, July 23, 2010

By 

L. Eric Ray "LER" (Birmingham, AL USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pogoplug Multimedia Sharing Device (Personal Computers)

I work out of town a lot and want to be able to transfer large files back and forth to a remote site. Also I collaborate with other professionals and need to share large files with them. Pogoplug is my solution. It works great. I have 2TB drives connected to it and, rather than trying to e-mail large files, I just upload to my pogoplug and share them with whoever I want. Also, whenever I have questions, the Pogoplug customer service is quick to respond and very helpful. I have been very pleased.

Eric

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

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

By 

Sergio Herrera - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pogoplug Multimedia Sharing Device (Personal Computers)

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.