Okay, I haven't had a chance to really explore my network drive yet, but I've set it up and tried a few things.
First, setup was really simple. Two plugs: power and ethernet. The Buffalo LinkStation Live (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2007/08/building-my-own-cloud.html) is very compact and quiet. I have it under the corner table in my living room with my router and UPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterrupted_power_supply). Absolutely unobtrusive.
The drive came with an installation CD that connects the drive to the network and my computer to the drive. Then, the drive settings can be adjusted via a web-based interface. Set some passwords, enable media sharing and it's good to go.
I've been ripping CDs to the drive in the background while I surf the web, blog, etc. With media sharing enabled, the folder designated for media shows up in iTunes as a shared folder. This allows me to play all the media on that drive, but I can't grab or drop files that way. I've been doing that through Windows Explorer instead. It's a tough limitation, but I'm considering ways to make it more manageable.
I haven't yet saved a backup image to the drive. Over my 802.11g (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11) wifi network, the time required exceeds twelve hours. I need to either start it right when I come home from work or hook into the router via ethernet. Fortunately, the drive has a gigabit ethernet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_ethernet) port, so it will keep up when I eventually upgrade to 802.11n. Also, smaller backups, like my Outlook file, works fine and after my initial backup image, I can set my tablet to do incremental backups (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_backup), which are small updates to the main backup. Those smaller updates should work fine over 802.11g.
Finally, web access is still not enabled. I need to open a port in my router, and while I know the password, apparently my user name is not what I thought. I must get that from Comcast before the web access will work from anywhere. However, it does work at home.
I'll post another update after I free up some time and tweak the system a bit. | 
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