Maxtor Fusion & MyBook World Edition - a mini HD server !

I love technology ! This is a bit of an understatement really, as why else would I run Geekanoids, bringing all this tech goodness day in, day out. Well, my latest trend, in my office, is that I love storage. Just recently I was embarrassed to learn that I had accumulated six external hard drives. A bit of re-organising and I gave a few away to the needy and I now have a much more manageable system. What does interest me is network storage (NAS). Currently I have a NAS hard drive, which sits hidden away and anything I need to take off my MacBook, to free up some room, gets transferred to the NAS. This solution is OK, but I am sure that I do not use my NAS to its full potential.

What excited me this week was the possibility of taking things one step further. I stumbled upon the Maxtor Fusion, which is a 500GB affair with a difference. Not only does it allow you to store files locally via a USB2 connection, but it also has an ethernet port, so it can become part of your local network. If you want even more flexibility, you can access your files from anywhere over the internet. You can even set up folders and send out specific email attachments to friends and colleagues, giving them access to files. Western Digital offer something similar called the My Book World Edition I & II. The latter does not mention Mac compatibility, though I am sure it would work fine.

I am determined to bring you details of how these two drives work, so will hopefully be able to get hold of review units soon and give you the lowdown.