The other day I was in Best Buy and noticed a new Cisco Prosumer line of products.   In case you didn't know, Cisco bought out Linksys, and so they are hoping to cash in on the Small Business market now.  Microsoft has been working this angle for more than 2 years, touting software, services and features specifically for small businesses. 

Over a year ago, I bought several Netgear ProSafe routers to help my business.  The reason I went with them, was because Cisco was too expensive, and the relatively new Netgear products offered a high bitrate VPN router product at an extremely cheap price.  Their top of the line (at the time) was roughly $359.  When you compare that to the $1000+ price tag on a similar featured Cisco product, it was a no brainer.

So what I did, was bought several servers, had them co-located (hosted on site at a company that leases space), threw a ProSafe router there on site, hooked up another router at home, and blammo.  I now have a seemless network, where I can access any server I own and it all shows up in Network Neighborhood.  The downside?  It took quite a bit of time to set it all up and get it working 100%, plus I had to wait for some Netgear firmware updates, and their vpn software doesn't work on Vista yet.  But technically if I had XP installed and used their VPN software, I could remotely login to my network while working at my neighborhood Panera or Starbucks.  And right now, the fact that I can roam with my laptop on the network, access any home pc from my server, and vice versa, I absolutely love it!

Now, supposedly these new Cisco products should do the same thing.  And they also offer money back when you upgrade and if you turn in your old products.  So checkout either product and see if it helps you be more productive.