Consumer Electronics Show 2004 Day 3 - And now, the rest of the story

Networking

Of course, everything and its brother and sister touted some form of networking connectivity. There were, however, some very interesting offerings in the pure networking hardware arena.

Netgear

One of the new products at on the floor at Netgear is the WGT634U Super Wireless Media Router. This router integrates a USB port allowing for consumer level network attached storage functionality via an external hard drive. Basically, what you get is accessible networked data without tying up a computer. The router can also keep the drive local and private or allow outside access for easy internet data sharing as well.

IOGear

IOGear has something along the same lines, but rather than offering wireless networking, the BOSS GNS1000 offers an internal hard drive. If the wireless router with external storage is more attractive to you, IOGear offers some external USB storage solutions as well.

DLink

If neither of these options seem to fit a need quite right, DLink's Central Home Drive is basically a hard drive with an Ethernet interface. Rather than grabbing a router, you can simply plug this baby into a router or switch you already own.