The push in our culture for everyone to become more mobile has made it necessary to access your documents and files on a mobile device. Smartphones and tablets are quickly becoming the new workstations for this generation, giving a new meaning to ‘personal computing.’ It is no surprise then that the popularity of cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox are on the rise, especially since they offer free space to clients to get started.
If you are like me though, there is a comfort in knowing that your music, photos, movies, and other files are stored locally on your device and readily available. You never know when you will be in a location that has no WiFi hotspot or bad network coverage. It seems storage space is where the industry has the most opportunity to grow. SD cards are a wonderful addition that can be added to most mobile devices, but even the largest of these (which is now 128 GB) don’t help if you are looking to store a massive amount music like I do. Portable external hard drives are great for storing all your files, but you usually can only access those through a USB connection to a desktop or laptop computer.
Seagate Wireless Plus
Seagate now provides a solution to this storage dilemma with the Wireless Plus. This battery operated drive does one thing that those other drives don’t. It creates and broadcasts its own WiFi signal! It is such a wonderful feeling to turn on the WiFi for this drive, connect my smartphone, and begin streaming music that has been stored to the drive. It does so much more though. This drive has the ability to function as a WiFi Hub that can support up to 7 different devices, which include smartphones, tablets, and laptops. It also has the capability to sync with Google Drive and Dropbox as well.
When the battery is fully charged, it will last a good 10 hours which means that you spend a day on the beach, backpacking on a trail, or taking a road trip while listening to music streaming to your mobile device. Using the Seagate Media App, which is available for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and Windows 8/RT, you can backup your photos and videos straight to the drive without connecting to a computer. It will also allow you to connect an existing WiFi hotspot so you can connect to web, check e-mail, and check social networks on your device as well.
What if you want to connect it to a computer? No worries. This drive comes with a USB 3.0 cable and a USB wall charger so that you can connect it as a regular external drive as well as charge the battery. Ranging from $149.99 to $199.99, the Seagate Wireless Plus comes in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage sizes. This is a perfect solution for someone who is looking to become mobile without losing storage capability.
