Both drives are decent. I have both. I prefer the My Book Live because its newer, and it appears to be faster and I like the GUI better. The MyBookLive is supposed to be faster. Both have Twonky Media Server which handles the interaction of networked media devices.
Ill try to answer your questions in order.
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Access to both of them are similiar, and easy via drive letter or path in Windows XP.
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At the same time, my MACs can read and write both, so can my Windows devices, there is no formatting that needs to be done, and Time Machine works fine with it even wirelessly.
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I am not familiar with using Acronis on these devices see link below;
http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-Live/3rd-party-backup-software/td-p/164690
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Media server works great with my Xbox360 and my IPHONE running TwonkyMobile (IOS is limited to MP4 video playback) - SideNote: FusionTeam SmartStor is free and can play audio and video files from IOS also. I use this for my IOS devices for playback.
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Itunes - shows up on my MAC fine / Havent seen in show on the WinXP but I havent really looked into why it is not. (anyone out there??)
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VLC installed on your computers (mac/osx), can play all the video files perfectly over wireless network. I prefer VLC just because.
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You can do WAN on both of them, as you get MIONET account to access the device remotely (can be extremely slow)
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Also both utilize the WD PHOTOS APP (can be slow) to access your photos from anywhere from an IPHONE/IPOD TOUCH.
My conclusion: If you can get My Book World for a good price ( i have found two at $99) I would just go with that unless you have an all gigabit network and wanted to be consistent. I have a gigabit network, but I am not getting the advertised speeds, but getting what everyone else is appearing to get. I have bought two of the My Book Worlds because of the price for family members.
