We have a home network we call WagNet. Get it? Wagner...WagNet. Yeah, not so funny, but it makes sense. Well, the other day Dell was running a special called 10 Days of Deals where each day, they had a great deal on four different items. The special price lasted for two days (except for the last day of deals).

Our network consists of 3 desktop computers (would be 4, except one of them doesn't run...hasn't for over two years), 2 laptop computers (would be 3, except the hard drive on one of them is failing), 2 Pocket PCs (would be 3, except the backlight had failed on one of them), a networked all-in-one printer, and three gaming consoles (a PlayStation 3, a PlayStation 2, and a PlayStation Portable)—though only two of them are actually connected. Why is there so much equipment on our network? Well, I guess the better way to put it is that we have a home network because we have so much equipment.

Two of the desktops came with me (the non-functioning and its replacement), one desktop came with my wife, and the fourth was inherited from my mother-in-law. The defunct laptop we got when we lived in South Dakota as a traveling computer; Genevieve assumed that as her primary computer. So, I got another laptop to take back and forth with me to the office; it's my Ubuntu box. The third laptop is a replacement for the defunct laptop for Genevieve to use as her primary computer. Two of the Pocket PCs are mine; I used to call them my brain. The third Pocket PC was a replacement for Genevieve's Palm PDA. The consoles just happen to have network capabilities; that actually come in handy for the PSP and PS3. The printer we got out of necessity—a printer and scanner and fax machine accessible by every computer on our network.

So, there you have it, a brief overview of WagNet. Except that there is a new device on it. I mentioned the 10 Days of Deals because we took advantage of an amazing deal that solves a problem with our home network. The problem: we could use a large amount of central storage accessible to all the computers on the network.

Now, we could have gotten a large hard drive and slapped it in one of the desktops. We were using this solution in the least-used and slowest of the desktop computers (an ideal location for such a solution—a file server), but its network connection wasn't reliable. And the hard drive we were using as the file server was only 160GB; while large, it was a bit small for our needs.

The solution: a 1 TB Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive, which has an Iomega SRP of $229.99, Dell normally sells for 179.99, but with their 10 Days of Deals (I forget which day), we were able to get it for $139.99. This NAS is large enough to suit our needs, which is not only to store personal files we may need from anywhere on the network, but also files we want to share with everyone on a computer in our network, especially all the photos we take with our digital camera.

And, as the name implies, it has a built-in media server. The media server is DLNA compatible (not DLNA compliant) and serve our media (pictures, music, and videos) to any network attached media player (for instance, the PS3). And, it works flawlessly¹.

The interesting thing is we primarily got the device to use it as a NAS, but we have fallen in love with the Media Server aspect of it. We have ripped many of our CDs to MP3, stored them on the NAS in the media server folder, and listened to them through the PS3. We have downloaded copies of our favorite shows (episodes we've missed, especially), stored them on the NAS in the media server folder, and watched them through the PS3. We have stored our photos on the NAS in the media server folder and enjoyed viewing them through the PS3.

The Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive and the PS3: a match made in heaven.

If you were looking for a NAS solution, I would highly recommend this device. In addition to the features I mentioned, it also includes a USB 2.0 port, into which you could either expand the storage space or attach a printer; the Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive includes a simple print server.