Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It's like rollin' in a Bentley... on your way to pick up your G5 for a flight to Vegas... where you're greeted by naked supermodels fighting over who gets to eat Skittles out of your belly button. My original needs were for a SOHO backup solution but this NAS does much, much more! The number of "production" devices in my home has increased steadily over the years and I needed to centralize storage/backups for a few MBPs, W7 laptops and a couple PCs. The main issue I have with backup solutions is that they are typically invisible and boring. I hate spending money on something with no "bling" factor. In the past, I paid a few Benjamins for a piece of hardware (w/ proprietary software included), set up some backup tasks and let it do it's thing. It is difficult to quantify the value of a backup and I know how important they are but let's be real for a second... You aren't getting any "WOW" features. Synology changed my perspective on that. Setup was super easy and I had 4 (additional) GBs of RAM and five 4 TB WD Red HDDs installed and the unit booted up and running within 15 minutes. After that came the parity check so I called it a night and resumed setup in the AM. Synology's DSM is a superb piece of software. Come to think of it, it "is" what I love about this NAS. Hardware specs are great for home/small office needs and with LACP, throughput on the DS1515+ is jaw-dropping. Setting up backups was a piece of cake. I set up a Time Machine folder for the Macs, and several other directories for the Windows gear. Next, I synced a couple of Google Drive accounts and mapped a few folders on some of the PCs. I then moved/consolidated all of my music/pics/video to the NAS and backed everything up to Glacier. I was impressed how quickly the reorganization was going and figured I would document the config, set everything on cruise control and walk away. I was feeling good but I didn't feel like I was Ballin'. Somehow, in between looking at 26" dubs for my ride and four finger platinum rings, I stumbled across a bunch of nerds talking about something called PLEX. Turns out, this piece of software lets you turn your boring NAS into a disco ball-spinning, bass-thumpin', panty-dropping, entertainment center. I played with the free version of PLEX for about 15 minutes before deciding to go all-in on a lifetime subscription. A couple of days later I had everything (and I mean everything) hooked up on it. PLEX is serving (the nerd definition) music/vids/pics to my 3 MBPs, 2 PCs, 4 smartphones, 5 tablets, 1 Apple TV, 1 Roku, 3 Samsung SMART TVs, 2 XBOX 360s, and 1 XBOX One! Yay-yeah!!! Don't hate... My baby's mama couldn't be happier! She's currently on vacation in Florida with the kiddos and has been enjoying the ease with which she can access all the media. Meanwhile, P-Daddy (me) is back at the crib gettin' his grind on with all of the new-found features. If Synology was an NBA player, I'd own it's jersey. You feel me? UPDATE 06.13.15 Even though I really wasn't having any problems with the above setup, I upgraded the RAM to 16GB because... 'MURICA!!!