Ah, convergence, that buzzword of the 1990s – so often promising a lot, but delivering little. Evidently, D-Link is toying with the convergence concept with the neatly packaged Xtreme N DIR-685. This four-port Gigabit router features 802.11n Wi-Fi, a 3.2in LCD panel – billed as a digital photo frame – and Nas functionality too. …
Electronic Photo Frame - something you put on display in the lounge/bedroom etc to show to yourself / friends pictures of family, friends and places
Router - something that is plugged into the ADSL filter on the BT Master socket, often under the stairs, on a sheld or otherwise hidden away from view as the layout of the house requires.
Anything so labelled is usually anything but extreme. It seems the DIR-685 "out-of-the-box" device still needs a fair amount of configuration and tech knowledge to get all the features working, too much for the average user. Maybe the Xtreme bit refers to the extreme frustration of the average user trying to get the USB ports working, or trying to get the latest firmware. D-Link used to make reallly good and simple ADSL routers, why can't they go the extra mile and make the whole thing just work out-of-the-box, it's not like other NAS devices haven't already?
...buy another D-Link product in my life after experiencing living hell dealing with their idiotic and pushy indian tech support people - they kept ringing me up about a support call I'd put in, fair enough its customer 'care' - but every time I dealt with them, there was simply no fix to my problem.
Can't remember what the issue was any more but we're talking basic functionality. Eventually I had to tell them to stop calling me, and close the call, despite it being totally unresolved. They had no way of escalating the issue to anybody higher, let alone the engineers.
And put it this way, this jack-of-all-trades but master-of-none product doesn't exactly make me want to rush down to the shops after it. Especially with its £200 price tag.
I tell you what D-Link - you double up on the screen size, make it capacitive touch screen, media streamer (yeah 'Jerome 0') and generally make it a bit more compatible and faster (making the Gigabit Ethernet a little less pointless) oh and just make it suck a little less, sell it for 200 notes or less cos as it is its sinfully overpriced, oh you'd also have to promise direct support contact with the original developers, and allocate their time solely to me, THEN I might just take a second look, no promises to buying it though!
All in all, you've got your work cut out for you D-Link!
"Anyway, weren't Cisco trying to shut the d-link arm down or something?"
ITYM LinkSys.
Some of their products are just as bad as D-Link's, but it' still a totally different company.
Fail - 'cos that's what this device does.
Posted Tuesday 28th July 2009 21:30 GMT
Anonymous Coward
"buying a Draft-N router, LCD panel and 2.5in Nas separately would cost a lot more"
#
would it?
a quick look on ebuyer finds a draft-N router for £34.99, 3.5" NAS for £34.36 and 7" digital photo frame for £24.99. thats less than a ton for the lot. i wouldn't mind having all these devices in one but i'm not about to pay double the price for the privilege, even if they'd actually done a decent job of it.
Nobody *ever* gets these devices right and I can't for the life of me understand why it has to be so damned hard.
A few years back Asus developed a promising unit, but burdened it with 100Mbit ethernet. This one can't handle more than 1 user and doesn't support Linux, even though I'm quite sure it actually has Linux under the hood (didn't bother with the entire article.
Why?
I guess we will have to wait for apple to build one only to charge us twice as much.
Register
D-Link Xtreme N DIR-685
Ah, convergence, that buzzword of the 1990s – so often promising a lot, but delivering little. Evidently, D-Link is toying with the convergence concept with the neatly packaged Xtreme N DIR-685. This four-port Gigabit router features 802.11n Wi-Fi, a 3.2in LCD panel – billed as a digital photo frame – and Nas functionality too. …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Posted Tuesday 28th July 2009 09:19 GMT
Jerome 0
The future #
- Iron out the various compatibility problems.
- Expand the screen to fill the front face, and make it touch-sensitive.
- Throw in a media streamer.
All of a sudden, you have a device everyone will want. I expect we'll be seeing such things everywhere in a couple of years time.
Posted Tuesday 28th July 2009 09:56 GMT
bertie bassett
why photo frame? #
Electronic Photo Frame - something you put on display in the lounge/bedroom etc to show to yourself / friends pictures of family, friends and places
Router - something that is plugged into the ADSL filter on the BT Master socket, often under the stairs, on a sheld or otherwise hidden away from view as the layout of the house requires.
What next TV's on Fridges?
Posted Tuesday 28th July 2009 09:56 GMT
Matt Bryant
Never buy anything labelled "xtreme" #
Anything so labelled is usually anything but extreme. It seems the DIR-685 "out-of-the-box" device still needs a fair amount of configuration and tech knowledge to get all the features working, too much for the average user. Maybe the Xtreme bit refers to the extreme frustration of the average user trying to get the USB ports working, or trying to get the latest firmware. D-Link used to make reallly good and simple ADSL routers, why can't they go the extra mile and make the whole thing just work out-of-the-box, it's not like other NAS devices haven't already?
Posted Tuesday 28th July 2009 13:19 GMT
Anonymous Coward
"certainly looks the part" #
I suppose "part" is a synonym for genitalia, and it certainly looks like c0ck.....
Posted Tuesday 28th July 2009 13:19 GMT
Stu
I vowed never to... #
...buy another D-Link product in my life after experiencing living hell dealing with their idiotic and pushy indian tech support people - they kept ringing me up about a support call I'd put in, fair enough its customer 'care' - but every time I dealt with them, there was simply no fix to my problem.
Can't remember what the issue was any more but we're talking basic functionality. Eventually I had to tell them to stop calling me, and close the call, despite it being totally unresolved. They had no way of escalating the issue to anybody higher, let alone the engineers.
And put it this way, this jack-of-all-trades but master-of-none product doesn't exactly make me want to rush down to the shops after it. Especially with its £200 price tag.
I tell you what D-Link - you double up on the screen size, make it capacitive touch screen, media streamer (yeah 'Jerome 0') and generally make it a bit more compatible and faster (making the Gigabit Ethernet a little less pointless) oh and just make it suck a little less, sell it for 200 notes or less cos as it is its sinfully overpriced, oh you'd also have to promise direct support contact with the original developers, and allocate their time solely to me, THEN I might just take a second look, no promises to buying it though!
All in all, you've got your work cut out for you D-Link!
Posted Tuesday 28th July 2009 14:19 GMT
DarkNerd
Toasty #
Where's the heat dissipator?
that's got all the makings of a red hot mofo
hotter and hotter till it unsolders all the ic's from the pcb
Have owned D-Link before, never again
Anyway, weren't Cisco trying to shut the d-link arm down or something?
Posted Tuesday 28th July 2009 15:56 GMT
Simon Ward
re: Toasty #
"Anyway, weren't Cisco trying to shut the d-link arm down or something?"
ITYM LinkSys.
Some of their products are just as bad as D-Link's, but it' still a totally different company.
Fail - 'cos that's what this device does.
Posted Tuesday 28th July 2009 21:30 GMT
Anonymous Coward
"buying a Draft-N router, LCD panel and 2.5in Nas separately would cost a lot more" #
would it?
a quick look on ebuyer finds a draft-N router for £34.99, 3.5" NAS for £34.36 and 7" digital photo frame for £24.99. thats less than a ton for the lot. i wouldn't mind having all these devices in one but i'm not about to pay double the price for the privilege, even if they'd actually done a decent job of it.
Posted Wednesday 29th July 2009 09:12 GMT
Goat Jam
Always the case #
Nobody *ever* gets these devices right and I can't for the life of me understand why it has to be so damned hard.
A few years back Asus developed a promising unit, but burdened it with 100Mbit ethernet. This one can't handle more than 1 user and doesn't support Linux, even though I'm quite sure it actually has Linux under the hood (didn't bother with the entire article.
Why?
I guess we will have to wait for apple to build one only to charge us twice as much.
Posted Wednesday 29th July 2009 09:12 GMT
Alan Thompson
NAS - NOT! #
It doesn't really have NAS. To call it NAS it would need to support NFS or CIFS/SMB at a minimum. Anything else (FTP/HTTP/DNLA/UPNP) is NOT NAS!
This topic is closed for new posts.