Network storage made cheap and easy?

So I ran across the Linksys NSLU2 at ThinkGeek today. A perfectly simple device, it has an Ethernet port and 2 USB 2.0 ports. You can plug in UBS drives (or a memory key) and make it available over the network. Tom's Hardware has a good review of it, where they mention it can also perform simple network backup functionality. While googling to see if it can talk to windows only (it can talk to any SMB compatible client - users claimed no problems with OS X or Linux) I found that there is a open-source community building firmware for it (similar to other Linksys devices). The UNSLUG Linux-based firmware sounds amazing - I read about people running webservers, iTunes servers and much more on these humble boxes.