I ended up doing as most in this thread did. Networking.

I bought a BubbaII from http://www.excito.com/ its a small fan less linux box with 2x usb, 2x ethernet, and 2x extSata.

NB: NICs are gigEthernet, but they perform substantially slower than one expects. This according to the manufacturer, is by design to keen the temperature at a resonable level to accommodate the fan less design.

I work as a sysadmin in a pretty large mobile network operator. This is a business packed with obscure and higly proprietary systems (tho most protocols are free and open), yet I use OSS every single day. All of our machines, from the most mission critical call handling clusetrs to the most insignificant terminal pc, are in some way depending on OSS tools. Even an ancient Sinix/Reliand UNIX cluster from like... 1996 runs openssh and some other gnu apps.

I could not for my life imagine a world without OSS tools readily available for almost any platform I use. So, a big thank you to everyone who is making it possible!