I've just come across an issue where a back-end system has migrated from one server to another and as part of the process the server name changed, for example; from server01 to server02. The problem I had was that whilst I could easily go into Database Connections and update the connection details in there I also had a number of workspaces that pulled MapInfo TAB files from various locations on that server. I had to go and update the UNC paths to the file locations for each of these.
In a similar vein to the Database Connections and Web Connections options would it be possible to have a new option for defining commonly used UNC paths which you could then assign aliases to, for example; \\server01applicationmaps could have an alias of app_maps which could then be used in readers and writers. The advantage of this would be that if a server name changed or path moved then this could be updated in a single place which would take effect immediately across multiple workspaces.