On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Randy Rathbun [email protected] wrote:
I agree with Justin on his point about the firmware. The stuff I have seen so far has stunk.
The first device I picked up a while ago would work fine - if only one user was doing one thing on it. Throw another task at it, and it would lock up. There was a firmware upgrade for the thing, but that would allow two tasks. What was the point?
The next device I picked up started off just as bad. As soon as some bit torrent traffic started up, the device would freeze. A few weeks later this was fixed in firmware. Once I threw a fourth computer at it, the device again froze.
I've pretty much had it with these devices!
Perhaps I should balance my opinion above with my DNS-323. It's a very nice 2 drive system that comes with several features by default. More importantly, they left a fun_plug feature in the init scripts that people have used to extend the device in fantastic ways. Without flashing the firmware, I have installed an ipkg setup into /opt. My system is currently running ssh+screen+irssi, and has several packages available should I desire to extend it.
Turnkey solutions have some very nice properties. They're very small, since there's no consideration for add on cards or RAM. They're also quiet, since they're low power. They're also fairly cheap. Atom motherboard+cpu combos are $100, without power, RAM or a case, while Frys lists the DNS 323 at $130.
The point is, they can be pretty great hardware if you can homebrew the software.
Justin