Sadly, downgraded product

Does the v2 have quotas? if so that would solve your 'problem' of your girlfriend using more than the allocated space better than a separate volume, IMO.

as to 'downgrades' of products, it is not the first time, see for example the 'pioneer' and ultra/ultra plus models, which are all downgrades of the 'pro/business' models.

It's much easier to manage quotas set on shares than to manage volumes, isn't it?

TeknoJnky wrote:
Does the v2 have quotas? if so that would solve your 'problem' of your girlfriend using more than the allocated space better than a separate volume, IMO.

I don't own one. But the manual describes a quota for time capsule, but nothing else. The firmware releases don't list adding quotas for shares as a new feature. I agree that putting quotas on shares would be a better approach than separate volumes. For one thing, the quotas could be reset.

TeknoJnky wrote:
as to 'downgrades' of products, it is not the first time, see for example the 'pioneer' and ultra/ultra plus models, which are all downgrades of the 'pro/business' models.

I think what is different here is that the ARM and Sparc products have exactly the same names.

StephenB wrote:
I think what is different here is that the ARM and Sparc products have exactly the same names.

I agree. The Pioneer/Business Edition naming did cause some confusion but not as much as the naming of the ARM products. It's good that the Ultra, Ultra Plus and Pro Series have very different names but even then similar model numbers (e.g. RNDP600U and RNDP6000) can cause some confusion.

mdgm wrote:
It's good that the Ultra, Ultra Plus and Pro Series have very different names but even then similar model numbers (e.g. RNDP600U and RNDP6000) can cause some confusion.

Different prefixes for the each product line would have been easier for us consumers (and likely support). It's amazing how much time we spend here just sorting out what product people are posting about.

They probably don't want to give up the RND for ReadyNAS Desktop. That makes it tough when also wanting to limit the alphas to 4 letters. The original NV+ and Duo were RNDxxxx and they could certainly have used RNDA for the Arm based units (which would have helped immensely). The original and current Pro series got RNDP and the NVX got RNDX then the Ultra got RNDU. But for the Plus series, the P was already taken.

StephenB wrote:
I think what is different here is that the ARM and Sparc products have exactly the same names.

For me marketing wise it's a nightmare. I started looking a couple of months ago and the various model numbers did nothing but confuse me. After a relatively long period of research I was left with the impression the ARM units were replacing the SPARC units and expected them to offer the same or additional features. I simply guessed the INTEL units would be replaced once the low end ARM units were completely rolled out with high end ARM models. So I felt if I purchased an INTEL unit it would be outdated even though it was faster and offered more features.

The lower pricing on the ARM units would tend to make you think they are entry level units which they are to a large degree. However nowadays prices often fall as fast as features are added. Throw in the 2TB drive limit on some models and it gets even worse. They need to clearly separate the units with better defined target markets. Even the software (firmware) feature set is confusing as the ARM units were/are missing a lot of the features of the SPARC and INTEL units. You don't want to buy ARM since you are losing features... you don't want to buy outdated hardware...

I ended up ARM based even though I wanted some of the higher model features like TiVo archiving... well guess what it was added along with a lot of other features. So now it's even confusing on what features various models will have going forward. My suggestion for consumer sales which is worth less than two cents... get all models under ARM with the only difference being the number of bays. All units come with the same basic feature set and sell the advanced features on an individual basis. Want TiVo arching... fine that's $49... want rsync... that's $29... etc. The consumer doesn't have to commit to what features they want up front... which stopped me from purchasing a unit for a long time. You gain the opportunity for additional sales over the life of the unit. One could even sell updates to the same feature as they are rolled out. End result is the consumer has less choices for their initial purchase (less confusing) and at the same time more choices if and when they want to take advantage of them.

noooooooooooooooo don't give them any more ideas about nickel and dimeing people to death

the software feature set should be exactly the same across all lines, and hardware should differenciate between the models.

The ARM processor is a 32bit processor. Only two of ReadyNAS models are currently 32bit and both are the low end ARM based units. It will be a while before there is an ARM 64bit in the market and even then it is unlikely they will be able to go toe to toe with the x-64 Intels. While ARM strives for low power use, that conflicts with high performance.