ArmorLink Post Genie: Network Convergence in a Little Green box

Conclusion

For what it does, the Post Genie from Armor Link is an attractive, easy to manage and function convergance server. Those who will benefit from this server will be small businesses or entrepreneurs. The ability to have an email system without knowing anything about email routing, configuration, and security is pretty attractive. However, the system does require slightly more than basic knowledge of networking, albeit just more than your average Linksys router.

An additional feature that would enhance the value of the Post Genie would be file-sharing; with capabilities to hold 400GB of RAID striped hard drive space, the Post Genie would also make an excellent MP3 server. Hopefully, Armor Link will add some much needed features and security fixes.

The largest drawback of the Post Genie is the price tag. Although retail prices seem to vary dramatically, the configuration we reviewed today runs about $1000. This may seem a lot for a 300MHz Linux machine, but the addition of preconfigured mail, routing and firewall options make this a fairly unique hardware item. Building a similar machine to the Post Genie may only cost the Do-It-Yourselfer a few hundred dollars, but configuring the plethora of services and optimizing WAN/LAN capabilities are worth the extra cost to an increasingly large niche market.