On Our Desk - 17

Icy Box LAN104 USB Network Storage

Manufacturer: Icy Box
UK Price (as reviewed): £45.00 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): TBC

Although it’s a solid and useful sounding product in theory, there’s actually been a fair amount of discussion over whether the apparently unnamed Icy Box LAN104 is as essential as it first seems. The basic idea is that it’s a USB hub that makes any storage device plugged into it accessible over a network automatically.

In theory it sounds a good idea – useful for letting someone on one side of the house access a USB full of needed data which is awkwardly on the other side of the house. There’s a faction of the staff at bit-tech who ascribe to this point of view.

At the same time though, there’s another faction (well, Joe) who reckon that it’s a mostly pointless system once you bear in mind how often you actually need to remotely access a USB stick, let alone one that’s conveniently plugged into a networked storage device.


If you need to use the info on one side of the house, why would you go all the way to other and plug the USB in there? That’s assuming that the USB isn’t either already plugged in or often needed in more than one location – but if that’s the case then what’s wrong with a shared hard drive? Joe is perplexed by this, so if you’ve got answers to these questions then drop them in the forums, if only to shut him up.

Still, if you find yourself regularly needing to remotely access USBs across a network then the Icy Box LAN104 should suit your needs. In fact, we’d all like it much more if it had a proper name and not just some generic serial number. It says “4x USB network storage” on the box too, but it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Cracking open the box for the Icy Box LAN104 reveals a fairly standard looking USB hub with four USB ports up front, plus an Ethernet port, power socket and on/off switch at the back. The USB ports are all nicely spaced, so you can even get memory sticks with chunky cases in next to each other, and all of them are USB 2.0 compliant.


Build-wise, the Icy Box LAN104 is a mixed bag at best. While it looks good at first glance and has a nice, shiny top and a rubberised underside to stop it slip-sliding all over the place, the details are a little sketchier. The stuck-on silver Icy Box logo started peeling off within seconds of taking it out of the box for instance. It wasn’t long before the ‘X’ in Icy Box, which either marks the spot or stands for ‘Xtreme’, had become utterly unstuck.

It’s also worth taking special note that the Icy Box LAN104 doesn’t come with the right UK plug adapters either. There’s a supplied 2-pin power plug, but no 3-pin adapter that will safely convert the plug to the model used in the UK – so expect to have to buy one if you do decide to pick up an Icy Box LAN104. The supplied power and Ethernet cables aren’t overly long either, which means they may be a bit unsuitable if you need to route the cables down through an in-built desk cable tidy before they reach your PC.

The good news though is that setting up the Icy Box LAN104 is relatively easy to set up thanks to the included driver CD - there are drivers for both Windows XP and Vista 32 and 64-bit and really all you need to do is plug this baby into the router, install the software on relevant PCs and let it do its job.

Whether that job is something that actually needs doing or not though is something that the bit-tech team will continue to argue over.

Verdict: It’s hard to really recommend the Icy Box LAN104 when it doesn’t even include the basic adapters to power itself in the UK, but it is at least small and discrete, even though it’s far too expensive at the same time.