Problem: You have a big music collection, and you want to share it with multiple computers around the home. Ripfactory's RipServer is one way around this, but it leaves out the essentials in it's rip'n'store network storage device.
The RipServer is a minimalist box containing a CD drive, a 500GB or 1TB hard drive and a small Linux brain. Slide in a CD and it is ripped to MP3 or lossless FLAC formats, whereupon it is available to everyone on the network. The box will also store movies and while it will play DVDs, it won't rip them.
A semi-automatic CD ripper is fine when you first want to convert your collection of discs, but after the initial run, the CD player is somewhat redundant. It would have been better to include WiFi; as it is, you need to hook the RipServer to your network via ethernet. Ripfactory does gain points for including USB for adding extra storage, but at $600 and $700, it's essentially a fancy and expensive NAS. If you want a true $700 home media box, it already exists. It's called the Mac Mini.
Product page [Ripfactory via Crave]
