I am contemplating getting an external hard drive that I could share between my windows desktop machine, apple macbook, and PS3. Ultimately, I would like to get an external hard drive with USB or firewire that I could hook up to a network storage adapter like

http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Network-Storage-Adapte-PORTS802-11G54MBPS/dp/B0009VU7FS/ref=sr_1_7/104-1439263-7065501?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1175021774&sr=8-7

Currently, is there any way that the PS3 can access a networked drive, or is the only way to install linux? If I go this route, I guess I am going to have to selectively hook up the drive via USB to either the PS3 or the network adapter and swap between the two manually. It would be nice to have a single network attached drive that has all music, photos, etc... that can be accessed by any desktop, laptop, or the PS3 without having to either physically switch the connection from one to another...

Yes and no.
And I started doing this type of setup a few months ago.

I picked up a NAS HD. It works great for my laptop and allows my roommates and I to share flies perfectly. However, currently, the PS3 can NOT connect to a network in this manner. Meaning the PS3 can not access a NAS HD without a direct connection. Unfortunately, my HD only has the ethernet connection, so I'm out of luck.

However, in talking to other people, this seems like the best "current" solution.
Get a NAS HD similar to this one.
**EDIT**
Forgot this site won't allow those links.
Get a NAS HD enclosure with ethernet AND usb 2.0 capabilities. Connect it to your ethernet like a standard NAS HD, but you can also connect the USB 2.0 on the drive to your PS3 via a cable and give your PS3 a connection to the data on the HD.
From my understanding people are having difficulty if they try to acces the HD with computer and PS3 at the same time, but other than that, no problems.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the input... My PS3 is downstairs while my wireless router is upstairs so I would need to somehow get a wired connection downstairs to hook up the drive in that manner, or get a wireless ethernet bridge that sits on my existing wireless network and then serves as a bridge to the NAS drive... I am not sure that would even work though...

Just keep your fingers crossed for a future update. I know I am.

Yeah... I may just go ahead and at the very least get an external drive with some sort of NAS adapter that I can use with my other computers... then if I wanted to, I could tote the drive over to the PS3 when needed... hopefully an update will allow the PS3 to access networked drives without having to have Linux installed.

I was doing a bit of research some time ago and could not find much info on this. I was wondering if a device exists that makes a PC emulate an external USB drive. So the PC would look/behave like a regular external USB drive to the PS3.

Anyone know if this is possible?