b) One admittedly glaring flaw in the plan is the estimated $25,000 it would take to put it in place. I only have big plans, not a big budget.

c) You’re a bigger Mac geek than I am, and that is saying something.

d) I do not doubt that there are unix-y gearheads out there that have figured out how to do some of what I want, but I neglected to add that I want it in an easy-to-use, well-planned, thoughtful interface that just does it. I know I can figure it out, I just don’t wanna.

e) There’s a copy of the Knowledge Navigator video floating around again.

f) The Princeton Band.

My present home system comprises a Mac mini, 900MHz iBook (“last of the G3s” ), SLiMP3 player (.v1), a NewerTech Ministack, an additional external FW drive, a Netgear wireless router, and a wireless Ethernet bridge that lets my SLiMP3 player talk to my stereo wirelessly.

I’m not doing a lot with video right now, though I am serving a dozen or so (and growing) short videos from the mini. I’m using Gallery2 to display about 9,000 images via my Web site. I have just over 10K songs that I can stream either to the home stereo or via the Web using the SLiM server/iTunes combo.

Right now, this setup suits me fine and seems to feel just about right. Clearly, your needs (and budget) are far grander than mine.

“As soon as they were in range of our wireless network, I’d like our laptops to sync their data with our Precious Data.”

I would be surprised if someone at macosxhints hadn’t done — or at least tried — something like this. Sounds like a job for AppleScript, iSync, cron, and/or launchd?