Be it in a single drive setup or a RAID 0 array, this drive kicks some serious IDE-butt. Maxtor's and Quantum's offerings are speedy and can be found cheaper, but the Deskstars really are the top of the line and deserve the Ars Award of 2000 for best drive. There's a reason we have 5 of these in the Orbiting HQ here. No doubt next year we will have a separate Networking category, but for this year, the Linksys Cable Router takes the honors of the Best Peripheral. You install it and forget about it because it just does its job.
Installation is a snap.
The only time I ever notice my Linksys is when I turn out the lights and see its green network traffic LEDs blinking in the dark. The thing just plain works. And, as was clear from Comdex, everybody's gettin' in on the home router business, so this sort of thing is only going to get easier to find. The days of running a dual NIC box with connection software are numbered. About a year ago, the Visor Deluxe offered a hell of a lot more value than any Palm PDA and as a result it has sold well, forcing Palm to play catch up in this sector of the PDA market.