5. Summary and Conclusions

The Kuro Box is a powerful little home server, easy to develop for, and powerful enough to handle the needs of a home network. After a few days of casual experimenting, I was able to configure it with Apache, MySQL, an X10 home-automation program, a Web Camera, an iTunes server and more.

Compare this to the months it has taken me (and a band of dedicated NSLU2 hackers) to get close to that point with the NSLU2, and it's obvious that Buffalo has delivered an open source developer-friendly product. And while the lack of documentation and the faulty web interface are annoying, they're no show-stopper for the targeted audience.

As far as a comparison to the NSLU2, I'm happy to have both on my home network, as they fill different needs. The NSLU2 has a much more active developer community and for many uses, its lower-cost and smaller footprint is the deciding factor. In other cases, the more powerful (and expensive) Kuro Box with its easy-to-develop-for software baseline will be a better fit. It's great to have choices!