New Version 5 Firmware Dramatically Improves User Experience on Thecus NAS Devices Stephen Fung March 10, 2011 Press Release I’ve had my run ins with Thecus in the past and I’ve loathed absolutely loathed using them. The user interface was so hard to use that even though I’m familiar with setting one up, I had to refer to the manually several times to make sure that what I wanted to do was what I wanted to do. Even though the hardware was beautiful, when it comes to a NAS, if the user experience and UI isn’t spot on, you might as well roll your own box using your own hardware and one of the many varieties of DIY NAS distributions. I’ve told them this in the past, trying to convince them that the UI needs to match the hardware quality. They told me they were working on it but it would take time. Well, I guess the time has come! Version 5 of their new firmware and user interface is beautiful and supports N4200, N4200PRO, N4200ECO, N7700PRO, N7700PLUS, N8800PRO, and N8800PLUS. More support is on the way. Unlike the previous barren UIs, everything is labelled, streamlined, and there’s good online help in Verson 5. Things like warnings if you are about to nuke your share by accident. It really is well organized. Software and UI is really the only hurdle many Taiwanese companies have before their hardware really rocks and I think Thecus has finally got it with this latest update. They’ve even added a photo server called “Piczza!” and support for your iPhone if you want to remote access your NAS. Hardware wise, the new firmware gives you support for massive new 3TB drives. Because it’s Linux at the core, Thecus will be supporting a number of add ons officially. If you’re a current owner of a Thecus NAS, and have been too afraid to mess with the UI after a painful setup, I recommend you download this update and give it a go. Or you can check it out via an online demo first to see if it’s what you’re looking for. It’s definitely making me want to try a Thecus device again. More information on the devices Thecus makes can be found on their website. Full press release is also posted below for your digestion. [hide-this-part morelink=”Full Press Release”] Firmware V5: One of the Biggest Firmware Releases in Thecus History! Dramatically increase the efficiency of your NAS in just a few clicks. 03/10/2011– Keeping your software up to date is one of the golden rules of good computer management, and firmware is no exception. Thecus is very proud to introduce our brand new firmware V5. There are many new functions, both visible and behind-the-scenes, that will change the way Thecus NAS users use and view their NAS. In addition to these changes, upgrading to V5 shows a huge jump in performance using NASPT (NAS Performance Toolkit) and an amazing 50% speed increase using NetBench! Throughout this month, we’re going to release detailed articles about each major innovation, but first let’s quickly summarize how your Thecus NAS experience is going to change. Piczza! ™ Share a slice with our new photo server The first groundbreaking innovation we’d like to introduce is our new photo server, Piczza! Share private albums with selected friends or post a professional gallery using our well-designed templates to truly create a community around your pictures. You can even host all your company’s event photos for a living, breathing showcase that everyone can add to! Upload your pictures, post responses, and share the occasions that matter most. ThecusShare™: Access pictures, music, and video directly from your iPhone Accessing terabytes and terabytes of multimedia content from your iPhone is now possible, thanks to ThecusShare. Set your parameters for local or remote access, define which contents you want to share, then just walk away from your NAS and use your iPhone anywhere in the world! Watch your favorite movies, listen to the cool MP3’s you’ve stored, and show your friends a few pictures from your photo collection. You can even upload pictures to your NAS on the fly, just shoot and send! All you need is a broadband connection! EXT4 and 3TB HDD’s: Stay ahead of the curve Let’s all welcome the new EXT4 file system: it allows twice as much data capacity for each volume than EXT3 at 16TB. With 4K-block support, each file is broken into fewer pieces, giving you an incredible speed boost and much less space-wasting fragmentation. EXT4 also has extremely fast file system checks, improved timestamps, fewer subfolder limitations, delayed allocation, and many other functions that give you more speed, efficiency, and limits that won’t be reached for another 10 years! Staying at the forefront of the industry, V5 also supports 3TB hard drives, allowing you to bump your data capacity up by 50%! The V5 UI: Reorganized and with a universal help menu Last, but definitely not least, the user interface itself has also been improved. The menus have been reorganized to fit new functionality, and localization has been improved to make it easy for everyone to get the most out of their Thecus NAS. Another big step is the advent of a universal, comprehensive built-in help menu to walk you through each function and ensure an even greater ease of access. NAS are no longer reserved for advanced users! Thecus Modules: New and open-source add-ons Customize your NAS according to your needs thanks to Thecus modules, V5 style! Set up IP surveillance cameras, use Twonkymedia to play videos on your TV, backup your data with the advanced Rsync system, and much more! V5 builds upon Thecus’s growing volume of modules by adding two major ones, Piczza and ThecusShare, and making the entire library of modules open source! That means developers and adventurous users can modify modules to fit their needs or create brand new modules and publish them for the Thecus community. * V5 firmware comes pre-installed on all XXX series Thecus NAS. V5 for the N4200, N4200PRO, N4200Eco, N7700PRO, N7700PLUS, N8800PRO, and N8800PLUS is available on Thecus official website. V5 for other models will follow soon after. For more information on Thecus Firmware V5, check out: http://www.thecus.com/sp_livedemo.php For more information on Thecus, go to: http://www.thecus.com About Thecus® Thecus® Technology Corp. specializes in IP Storage Server solutions. The company was established in 2004 with the mission to make technology as transparent and easy-to-use as possible, and to make products that are not only the best on the market, but are accessible to experts and novices alike. With a best-in-class R&D team highly experienced in storage hardware and software and with a keen customer focus, Thecus® stays close to the market to develop high-quality products to fulfill the storage needs of today’s world. [/hide-this-part] Share This With The World!
