A class of add-on system components providing functionality of devices, management of self-help, customization and enhancement of services for devices, and remote monitoring at significantly reduced cost. It reduces the cost of UI and greatly enhances ease-of-use by realizing that the networked system can be headless and use a browser-based UI for its platform. It embeds a Device Model Agent (DMA) and connects to the Device-Centric Services platform to offer services. Additionally, it offers customized diagnostic access for customer representatives to enable self-help service actions to be performed, unifies and manages multiple access needs to several disparate data access mechanisms, and uses largely COTS PC hardware rather than customized PWBs.