I don't understand this. I use a laptop that I don't want to carry many files on, and that I often bring with me when I leave the house. I have NAS at home to hold my data and run services, including CI. It seems perfectly fine, even wonderful. I use mdadm and cryptsetup, which are non-proprietary pieces of software that set up simple, documented drive formats that are easily recoverable with simple/normal tools if there is a problem.
I have no idea how having a NAS would make somebody hip. Very strange disco. Everybody should have one.