Cloud Engines Pogoplug

Pros: Ease of setup, cheap (got in on a special introductory promo of $79.99), commitment by company to improve the user experience, open source support, gigabit network support, and very reliable. Integrated with Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.

Cons: Lacks wifi, one usb port, outlet prong inconvenient location (prefer how the apple does the airport), missing the sd slot of the developer's Marvel Sheeva plug, and no upgrade path to add more memory or internal storage.

Summary: I'm very happy with the device and consider it one of the best computer purchases I've ever made. What I like and wish they would list on the site is that they auto update the firmware on the device for you. Initially it was web interface only and it was quicker to simply unplug the hard drive from the device and connect it to the home computer but thankfully they came out with an app that makes it appear to be another hard drive and works at the speed of your home network. I highly recommend to have this connected to gigabit network if you intend to move a large file or large amount of files on a regular basis.

Because this is an open source device you can do a lot with it, there is a project called Open Pogo which tells you what commands to type step by step to enable more functions for the device, I've enabled a few things like samba, ctorrent, and vpn so I can log back to my network from any open wifi to use as a secure connection. Others have added extended media sharing, use it as a web server, and more. There are now more companies that are rebranding this Marvel Sheeva device with it running various other flavors of linux. To see what other operating systems you can put on it you can actually now buy the developer's version plug computer at www.plugcomputer.org if you want to roll your linux version.

I think most people will like it as is but there are some of us who wished they would have given us more. Though you can use an usb hub I wish they had more ports in the event it fails, I wish it'd support wifi even by usb, I also wish I could connect my printer to it on a hub as well, I also wish they gave us the ability to up the ram and internal storage in the event some of us wanted to experiment with it in a more radical direction. I don't see this as a problem now but can see it in the future but I wished they also used an esata with port replicating since this thing on the home network is limited by the usb port. I can see them coming out with a more expensive and feature filled device later, while this will serve 90% of anyone's needs for those 10% of us we want a little more.