Ok, so some of you didn’t get the late 90′s Gangsta Rap reference, but it was all I got…

NAS, as in Network Attached Storage, is probably something you heard about by now, as it’s finally starting to become popular. One company in particular, Data Robotics, it trying to become the face of NAS. Thankfully, they seem to be doing a pretty good job. Drobo is a stand alone hard drive storage unit that instead of connecting to your computer via USB, Firewire or eSATA (oh by the way… it can do that too) is connected to your network just like any other compute, via an Ethernet cable.

The reason Drobo (and NAS in general) rawks is because not only do you have a great backup solution for all your data, but you have one for ALL your machines. Everyone on your network can connect to the centralized storage unit. This is also great for storing Music, Videos, Pictures… all of your entertainment data so that you can access it from any machine in your home, or even streamable solutions like your Xbox360 or PS3. The Drobo allows up to 4 Hard drives to work in raid, and has a decent GUI so far. It is also very easy to update the firmware as far as we can tell. You can read more on Engadget’s mini review here.

Engadget also just released word that Data Robotics has set up a Dev community to start creating applications for it, most notably to turn them into web servers, ftp sites and even to utilize bit torrent technology. Last month there was also a decent price drop for the Drobos that are combined with 4 Western Digital Greenpower (*cough*lower RPM*cough*) Hard drives. Some might think the end prices of $749 (2 TB) and $1075 (4 TB) are kind of over the top, and sure it is a little steep, but the technology can only get better and Drobo is allowing the community to make it worth everyone’s while. This should keep the 1st and 2nd Generation Drobos still as viable as the new ones on down the line, outside of technological increases.

If this seems too much for you, Linksys also JUST released the first Daul-N Wireless Router with Built in NAS, the WRT610N which can be purchased for $150 from Amazon (Thanks Slickdeals.net). This is a great upgrade router for your home if you’re still running a B or G router from a few years ago. It has been highly anticipated and the NAS capabilities are just icing on the cake!

Welcome to the first big installment of technewsmadesimple.com. One major piece of technology that most people are afraid of touching is the hardware of a computer. While there are many of us who enjoy building computers, the majority of the people can’t even understand some of the terminology let alone the hardware components. Here in this installment, I will discuss each individual piece of hardware, along with pictures of my computer as I put everything together. There are links within this article that you can visit if you would like to find out more information about a particular topic (we’ve done the hard work for you already!). A video will also be accompanied with this, so please watch that as well (after you read this of course as I use a lot of acronyms, which is our last page of this article. If I leave an acronym out and you don’t understand it, please ask!).

Let’s start with the first component on this next page!