I dropped my laptop and the impact took out the hard drive.  I'm looking to get a network drive that backs up automatically to prevent losing everything again, something like a WD My Book Live or a Seagate Free agent Go Flex Home.  My question is, are they really as bad as all the reviews say or is the average consumer just not smart enough to read the manual and set everything up right.  Any suggestions?

The MyBooks and Go Flex are basic home user solutions and are prone to failure. I have seen a couple die and people have had to spend close to $1000 to get their files recovered.  

I have been setting up a few of the IOmega NAS in the link below for home users that really are worried about losing things but still want an easy to use solution.  The 2TB (2 x 1TB Drives) version can be had for around $275.00.  It can be setup as a 1TB mirror RAID and is hot swappable so if there are any issues with either physical drive you can swap one out and it will auto re-write to the other.  You can also get a Mozy.com account and have the drive auto-backup to Mozy online for the ultimate in backup file security. If the drive is destroyed in a fire, flood, theft, etc. at least your files are online.  

The cloud version has a lot of neat features for the price and the software guides you through setup easily.

http://go.iomega.com/en-us/products/network-storage-desktop/storcenter-network-storage-solution/network-hard-drive-ix2-200-cloud/?partner=4760

Since its a network based drive there no USB connections.  Anywhere you can get a network cable and power to it you can set it up.  Like inside a safe even!

It all depends on how much you want to spend and how much you value what you are saving to that drive.

Don't put all your egg's in one basket always holds true with backup solutions!

At least the iOmega RAID is like having two baskets in one.