Yes, and it's worth it for frequently used files and quick access backups that you and/or your family may want to keep around and share, but don't want to send into "the Cloud". Though in my case I then run backups/archives of those file server files that I do want to keep around into the Cloud! For example, licensed software and keys, the iDevice media directories (just point iTunes to the mapped drive share and Bob's your uncle), photos and videos, the file share for the home theatre PC, and so on. For years I've been pursuing a hand-me-down approach: generally my old PC lends its parts (motherboard, CPU, memory, every so often case and power supply) to upgrade the file server. The "unchangeables" in the FS are the hardware RAID controller with its disks in RAID10 configuration and a venerable USB stick that hold VMware ESX. So the actual server is a virtual machine. That way I can update the host machine without having to worry about having to reinstall! Older hardware gets a second lease on life instead of landfill! The only time I ran into an issue was when the RAID adapter itself died and its a pretty old model. Bought a cheap knock-off of the Adaptec 5805-Z from China - and didn't even have to reconfigure! Just re-attach the disks and all was well again. Also, the odd dying hard disk, but that's exactly why you run RAID. Now, should you have the privilege of gigabit Internet with no quota, then the whole equation may change: if you can get to files on the Internet as fast as most file servers, then that advantage disappears. Unless you then invest into a faster LAN. Good luck!

This entire thread brought a tear to my eye! Here I was thinking I'm the only grizzled fossil among a million "please, sirs, to send me the codes" or "can you do my programming homework for me?" and find that I am not alone! There are others whose first programming ventures were indeed programmable *calculators*? (TI-57 in my case) Mayhaps who thought that BASIC was a dumbing down and that Real Programmers used Assembler - when they were lazy and didn't just want to hack in 6502 machine code? *sniff* Vale atque ave, amici, vale atque ave!