12. Putting Oomph Into Network Storage

Do you have a bunch of USB hard drives and keychains kicking around? If so, the Linksys Network Storage Link is for you. It's a small box that will turn your drives into network attached storage, so you don't need to waste all that electricity leaving a PC on just to access attached hard drives.

There are two USB ports for attaching drives or USB keychains, while an Ethernet port provides the link to your network. Quotas can be set for users or groups. A really cool feature of this device is that backups can be scheduled to copy all data from Drive 1 to Drive 2.

You can purchase the Linksys Network Storage Link for just $79.99 at Newegg

WiFi Goes Long

Are you tired of weak wireless signals? Parkervision wireless PC Cards and USB Adapters promise to greatly extend the wireless range of your laptop.

With its proprietary D2D technology, Parkervision adapters have greater range than any other card we have tested, while using your existing wireless access point. In our informal tests, we doubled the range of our Cisco Aironet 350 equipped laptop. For wardrivers, this may be a very nice card to use.

For even longer range, you can use the Parkervision Wireless Access Point. Paired with the wireless PC Card, we were able to surf the Internet from the far corner of the parking lot, where before we could barely make it past the front door.

All three Parkervision products can be bought at their online store . Both wireless adapters are $99.95, while the router has an MSRP of $199.95.