Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
App Central
Last, but not least, is App Central. App Central is where you can easily extend the functionality of your NAS. The apps available range from Dropbox to Zen Cart and a ton of others in between. Installing is as easy as clicking the install button. Once an app is enabled, it will have its own icon on the desktop.
There are a ton of things I like about App Central. First, they have a large number of installable applications (9 pages of apps, 86 in total, at the time of this review), each of which has a clear description and a link for more information.
App Central isn’t without issues though. Once you start looking through the 9 pages of apps and find one you like, choosing install will pull you from your app selection screen and drop you in the Installed Apps screen (Similar to one of my gripes with IOS and Applications). Ideally, I would like to keep browsing without having to remember which page number I was on… If your applications have an update available to them, you must update each application individually as there is no “Update All” option.
Some Apps
The Surveillance Center is comparable to those offered by other manufacturers and is very easy to use. I was able to set up the D-Link DCS-1130 with ease; something I was unable to do with QNAP and Thecus as the camera isn’t supported yet. The images are clear and recording options are plentiful. When Live Viewing, you can select and pan multiple cameras but Live View streaming suffers from some delays that direct camera (through camera web interface) viewing doesn’t experience.
ASUSTOR’s Dropbox integration has to be the best I have seen yet; it is simply a thing of beauty. Once installed, signing in to your Dropbox account through the interface will link the AS-608T with your Dropbox account and the application interface will display the synchronization progress as well as a bar showing you how much space you have left.
