Maxtor's Shared Storage Plus ups the multimedia NAS ante
Looks like Maxtor's the latest to try their hand at blurring the line between home NAS (network attached storage) with multimedia capabilities, and set-top digital multimedia box—well, kind of. Their new Shared Storage Plus series of devices due this October will not only offer capacities up to that 500GB sweet spot, but have integrated media-server functionality to UPnP devices on the network, and even a couple USB ports for sharing printers or additional non-networked external hard drives. So yes, you'll have to keep streaming that content to other devices, but it should a little more seamless than rocking those damned UNC drive shares. The 10/100 port might also be a little disappointing for that maximum of 20 users connectible to the drive, but if you need more throughput you should probably be using a drive array anyway.
