So my last blurb was kinda short, but for anyone else interested, the key points I've liked about the Infrant unit so far are:

• Protocol support. AFP, NFS, SMB, FTP, rsync, and Webdav for files. So no matter what OS, or location I'm at, I can get at my files easily. SCP is coming in 4.0 firmware along with full open SSH access.
  
• Media streaming. Out of the box it does daapd for iTunes and such, uPnP for the PS3 and others, and some protocol used by networked DVD players. Additional support can be added.
  
• Expandability. You can start out with 2 disks mirroring each other, then plop in a 3rd disk to expand the space and switch to raid 5 without data loss. Then add a 4th disk later. It is still a RAID based system though, so drives do need to be identical in size. WHS and devices like the Drobo are moving towards file based redundancy and not block level redundancy allowing mixed sized disks, and I see the benefit of that. Most likely my Infrant replacement down the road will require this feature.
  
• USB support for various things. I can attach a printer to share it, attach a disk or media card to share it, or attach a USB disk to backup. It can also use a USB port to monitor the UPS it is attached to for proper shutdown.
  
• Speed. Looking at the benchmarks I found, the Infrant devices tended to be near the top in the home market.
  
• Power usage and thermal monitoring. The box has variable speed fans for cooling, and can also do scheduled shutdowns and startups, and spin down disks when idle.
  
• Warranty. So initially the cost seemed somewhat high to me, especially when I found pre Netgear branded boxes for a bit cheeper. Netgear expanded the warranty out to 5 years now though, so the cost seems reasonable for that. Combine it with 5 year warranty hard drives and the box will last me for a while.
  
• Hackability. It is running Linux under the hood, SPARC based Debian and with the next firmware SSH access will be allowed to anyone who wants it to extend the system beyond their existing system of adding in addins.
  
• Hardware RAID. So yeah, I know there is a big discussion of hardware vs software that has spun up here quite a bit, but for this particular setup it makes sense. The CPU doesn't have to be super beefy to allow for good performance.
  

I went the NAS route instead of a new do it yourself linux box just to avoid the time lost to setup and later upgrades. While I did like my old Linux solution running Gentoo, it still was a timesink at times. I'd rather my work on Linux/Unix at home to be something for fun and exploration instead of being forced into Linux to get my files back after a drive failure, or adding a new media streaming protocol.