Two decades ago? I vividly remember having to do that as recently as 10 years ago!

Very true indeed. On top of the great set of features already included, it's easy to enhance those things with extra packages. It's just so much less hassle to maintain these things if your main job isn't being a sysadmin. Anybody can basically do it and in a fraction of the time needed for regular server management, too.

Some might argue that these NAS things are too expensive compared to self-built systems. If you consider the time spent on them however, NAS systems beat DIY-systems hands down.

As many others have already stated, a NAS definitely is the way to go here. There are 2 good manufacturers that accomodate any need and have vibrant communities providing excellent support on top of what the manufacturers themselves offer: QNAP and Synology.

Both of them basically use custom Linux builds on their otherwise very PC-like hardware that is open to all sorts of tweaking and readily allows for adding all sorts of extra software.

As much as I'm for keeping the established parties on their toes, the pirate party certainly will not be able to do so. Has anyone bothered following their top candidate in television? Be my guest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-cDewZk7wo

Berlin has bigger problems than anybody in the pirate party could possibly handle or let alone help solve.

He probably meant to write "hatred"...

You can judge from lower userID that I'm a fair bit older than you... :)

I've been using and deploying these Linksys/Cisco RV0xx models for quite a few years now. Good feature set, great reliability, no problems. I hope they never stop making them!

The trouble with Motorola is that they hardly offer updates for their recent devices and prevent the owners from updating themselves by encrypting the bootloader so that it only accepts kernels cryptographically signed by Motorola.

Nobody expects Motorola to offer infinite support for outdated devices, but they should at least acknoledge that not everyone wants to follow their idea of product life cycle and thus might be interested in an open device that allows for 3rd party firmware images to be installed.

Then why are they building things like the Pogo (http://bit.ly/gZyTI6)? Looks much like the old idea of Polaroid to me...

That's just about what I did a few years back, when the PS3 hit the market. Today, I can't imagine how I ever coped with a handful of PCs needing constant software and hardware updates and problem fixing! Now it's netbooks for "work" and the console for "play". ;)