Following the introduction of its Disk Station DS-409+ NAS, which earned an “Outstanding Product” mark in our review last month, Synology has introduced a slimmed-down version based on 2.5-inch laptop hard drives. Measuring only 4.7 inches by 4.1 inches by 5.6 inches, the DS409slim occupies roughly half the desk space of its bigger brother, while still offering four drive bays for up to 2TB of storage capacity.

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That thing costs $400 dollars without the hard drives? That thing is nearly twice the size of the Mac mini, and the Mac mini has better options for the same price. The only thing this Synology product has that's better is 2TB storage capacity. The Mac mini has a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB memory, 120GB hard drive, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, and an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics for only $600. You could attach a large external drive, and it would amount to the same thing but much better, and you could even use it for some gaming if you wanted.

Something like this just doesn't seem worth $400 dollars when there is a lot of much better stuff out there for about the same armount of cash.

...i think i prefer the Drobo, connected to the network ... then a real computer

Forget the fact that you are totally and utterly missing the point of NAS!