Gadget of the Day: Maxtor Shared Storage

I installed a Maxtor Shared Storage hard disk on my home network. Very easy installation. Solid, no-frills Windows software allows each network user his or her own private set of folders as well as access to shared folders. The capability to automatically send files to pre-set directories based on type (photo, music, document) is clever, but I can't find a need for it. There are no other fancy features, like FTP. Also, the drive doesn't seem to ever spin down despite my setting the sleep timer on the management page, which is a minor annoyance. My biggest gripe is that for a drive of this size, 300GB, the 100MB/sec Ethernet link is on the slow side; I would greatly prefer to see a device like this with gigabit Ethernet. 

On the whole, I like this drive. It does exactly what I expected it to and it does so without requiring a lot of management or frittering around. See other shared disk products.