Have NAS's improved much over the last few years? I want one for simple stuff (file sharing, movie and music streaming, printer sharing, maybe some torrenting) and I've seen a Synology DS207 for £40, which I could then whack a couple of drives in.
Good idea? Or would I be better getting something more modern?
I've had my Netgear ReadyNas for nearly 4 years, and whilst I'd certainly look at the Synology offerings now if I was to buy, my ReadyNas does all I need without fault.
File sharing, movie and music streaming all I really use it for, so expect an older NAS would be suitable for your purposes.
I have a really old Buffalo Terrastation, It doesn't have dlna, and I cant do a few other things I would like to do. But I can stream from it on my tablet, i can manage all its content with XBMC on my TV. I can upgrade the discs easily enough.
Depends how much of a saving/how much you want bells and whistles I suppose.
£40 for the Synology mentioned above, and I already have a drive to go in it. So quite a big saving! Mainly will be used for file sharing and streaming music, but it has DLNA so in theory movie streaming should work fine too.
The 107 can only run quite an old version of DSM (the Synology OS), v3.1 vs the latest and greatest DSM v5.0. It hasn't got much grunt also so if you're looking to do anything CPU intensive (any video encoding) then it will struggle. The Synology DS115j can be had for under £100 and looks a good unit
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/2014/09/synology-ds115j-review/