Looqs Meebox initial thoughts

 

Just over a week ago I managed to bag myself a Looqs Meebox from Amazon recently for a princely sum of £25 +p&p..

Product Description from Amazon

“Use MeeBox Router as your central data storage device within your home network. So all your multimedia files are accessible through your PC or laptop and network media players via Internet. In addition, the MeeBox Router has a 4-port Gigabit switch/router and an integrated WiFi 802.11b/g access point
Features - UPnP MediaServer - iTunes server - Bittorrent client - APM web server - Web file browser - Web photo gallery - Blog - Web forumSpecifications1x500GB HDD - 2x 3.5" drive bays - Capacity: Up to 2 x 2TB Hard Drives (4TB Max) - RAID0 & RAID1 support - FAT32, NTFS, XFS, ext2, ext3 Network - 4-ports Gigabit Ethernet switch - Gigabit Ethernet WAN port - 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi access point - Services: SMB, FTP, SFTP, SSH, Telnet, VPN, HTTP, MySQL, printer sharing 2x USB ports for expansion Processor - ARM9 32-bit CPU w/ 16KB L1 cache - 128 MB DDR SDRAM - 16 MB Flash ROM Power supply - Power input: 90~220V AC, 50/60 Hz - Power output: 12V DC, 4A - Max. usage: 23W Dimensions 433mm x 209mm x 50mm cm Warranty Information Warranty Period (yrs) 1”

Feature wise its AMAZING, supports everything, NAS, SSH,OpenVPN, Media server (see amazon link), however the truth is that

- NAS Functions are slow when you consider it has a Gigabit switch embedded. 6MBs read/write vs 20MBs for a DLink 320.
- The media server (mediatomb) is ok, but its not fab as a DNLA Server, it is also not compatible with the XBox 360
- The inbuilt applications are all really really slow… Gallery/Wiki etc.
- The manual is good, but missing quite a few important points..

Most of these issues are mainly due to the fact that the processor is only running at 300Mhz, not lightning fast one would say..

However on the positive side

- Price! , amazing value for money..
- It does have a LAMP stack (Linux Apache MySql PHP) preinstalled
- SSH,OpenVPN Stack works well
- Busybox root access is out of the box, route to hacking?
- Printer server works fine
- Very low power

 

Was it worth the €200 Looqs wanted when it was on sale? NO
Worth £25? Absolutely!!!

Although I bought mine from ADMI@Amazon, http://aria.co.uk have also been selling them and they have a forum with a meebox owners club thread in their forum (link)