Hi. Aforementioned friend here. I have a Synology DS411j (www.synology.com). I have three computers (a Windows 7 box, a Macbook Air, and a small netbook running Ubuntu) that all talk to my Synology for backup purposes. Additionally, it serves as a media outlet for all of my music and movies, which I have streamed to at least four devices simultaneously with no performance degradation or serious issue. The nefarious bits of flotsam from the internet I feel the need to keep around (read: porn) are stored in a separate partition that is encrypted and rights-managed so that only my account can even see the partition.

Overall, for many home users, the Synology is probably overkill. However, once you get used to the convenience of backups and centrally located media and files, there's no going back to the old way. Everything is so much easier now (and, with the RAID configuration, a single hard drive failure would be a minor annoyance and not a Major Emotional Event). I'm a pretty big believer that you aren't truly living in the future until you've connected all the gadgets in your home to a NAS. But, then again, I'm a huge nerd, so your mileage may vary.