WD MyBook World Edition II Speed problems

(posted in network forum as well, unsure what category this fall under, since it's a networked HDD)

Hello all,

I have just purchased a WD MyBook World Edition II (gotta shorten the title..) and have it hooked up through my 100mbps LAN. My network setup is my Laptop which goes through Wi-Fi on my Netgear RangeMax Router.

The MyBook has a 10/10/1000 ethernet port on the back, and I have even tried plugging in directly to my laptop to the router to transfer files. It seems that anything I do with this unit, even browsing through a shared drive on my laptop has a lag time of click, wait, view the files/folders, click, wait etc... Transfering files/writing/copying etc is also like using a old 10based T connection to transfer files, slow...

I have now worked myself into a corner as this was to be a simple purchase for my small business to archive work etc and has turned into a small side project researching and reading etc, time I don't have right now. I looked at the HP Media Vault and the Netgear SC101, but opted for the WD based on the price, 3 year warranty, and small footprint. HP Mediavault required me to purchase an additional drive on top of the 500.00 pricepoint with one drive, and the SC101 has too many hardware incompatibilities I have read and thus, my purchase of the WD.

One other point to note, that accessing the control panel on this unit, is even slow, click, wait, click wait etc. Contacting WD has yielded a no response, message boards over at WD have also yielded little to no responses so I am looking for some help if anyone has run into this problem, has any suggestions or ideas? To me 100mbps should be pretty fast to transfer/copy/write etc, do I have to upgrade my network to 1000gigabit ethernet???

Thanks everyone for any help/suggestions you can throw at me!