Belkin Apps
As mentioned earlier in the review, users who opt to setup their router using Belkin's bundled utility are automatically loaded with a collection of Belkin Apps.
Unfortunately, there's no option to select which Apps you'd like to use, and the Play Max setup utility automatically installs the complete collection. Therefore, by running the utility you also get; Music Mover, Print Genie, Self-Healing, Daily DJ, Memory Safe, Torrent Genie, Music Labeler and Bit Boost.
Sounds a useful collection, but we're not particularly keen on multiple applications being installed automatically, and, making matters worse, users who choose not to keep them have to uninstall many of the apps individually.
But perhaps our complaints lie with the apps themselves - there's a chance we wouldn't mind having them if they all served a useful purpose. Let's run through them.
Daily DJ
The first app in Belkin's system tray menu simply creates automatic playlists on a daily basis. The functionality is available through other freeware programs - Apple iTunes, for example - but Belkin's offering does a decent job. It runs on the client, as opposed to the router itself, and will need to be installed on all the PCs on which you'd like to receive dynamic playlists.
Music Labeler
Up next, Music Labeler automatically scans your music collection and matches missing tags with the correct title, artist and genre. Unfortunately, when scanning a collection of 187 tracks, it failed to identify over half of them. Once again, Music Labeler runs on the client and not the router.
Music Mover
Despite the app name, Music Mover doesn't physically move your MP3 collection, it instead provides streaming functionality via a built-in DLNA server for the following file formats (which, incidentally, aren't only audio):
- Audio: AAC, AC3, AMR, ATRAC, LPCM, MP1, MP2, MP3, WMA
- Video: MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, WMV9
- Image: JPEG, PNG
Bit Boost
Acting as a shortcut to the
quality of service (QoS) profiles found in the admin panel, the Bit Boost menu in the system tray simply lets you choose your desired profile without loading up the browser.
Print Genie and Memory Safe (aka Networked USB Devices)
As the name suggests, the Networked USB Devices menu provides access to peripherals connected to the router's two USB ports. The Print Genie section lets you use a printer attached to the router - though setup is carried out using the default Windows utility - and Memory Safe lets you perform backups to USB storage devices.
The basic backup options allow you to choose which folders you'd like secured, and the Belkin Restore Utility can then be used to restore files from a previous backup.
The first full backup is followed by quicker incremental runs, but there's no option to perform backups at a certain day or time; it appears to just run on the hour every hour.
Self-Healing
As per the previous page, Self-Healing "looks for the clearest channels to operate on and automatically makes the switch if a clearer channel becomes available. It also automatically cleans routing tables." Fortunately, Self-Healing is built into the router and doesn't require the bundled utilities.
Torrent Genie (or Vuze?)
During installation, Belkin's setup utility also quietly installs version 4.3.1.5 of the Vuze BitTorrent client. There's little-to-no mention of how to use it, but it appears to be a front-end to manage Torrents downloaded by the router itself.
That brings us to a general grievance with all of the bundled apps; there's practically no bundled documentation.
Belkin's manual makes little reference to any of them, and you instead find yourself resorting to trial and error in an attempt to see what the apps can do.
It's an entirely frustrating experience, and unless any of the apps provide functionality you've been longing for, our advice would be to run the router without Belkin's bundled software.