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What is a NAS drive?

NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. In other words some storage that is connected to your wired or WiFi network at home or in the office.

A NAS device is a dedicated mini computer consisting of one or more hard drives which are then set up so that your PCs, Apple Macs, iPhones and Android devices can see the space, save stuff to them and also pull stuff from them.

NAS devices for the home tend to be relatively small and quiet devices that sip power and are designed to run 24 hours a day, whereas large offices might have bigger devices mounted in specialist racks.

NAS devices can store any kind of file that you might store on a computer or mobile device and are ideal for use as backup devices when set up correctly, offering peace of mind if something goes wrong with your computer.

There are many makes and model size of NAS to fit all budgets. The Synology devices are some of our favourites as they tend to come with lots of additional software that you can install, much of it is free to enhance the capabilities of the NAS from a simple storage device to a complex security camera recording system for example.

There is another device type called SAN which might seem the same as a NAS at first glance, however SANs tend to be used in enterprise environments and operate in a different way.

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Repurposing your old computer

You’re sat waiting for your ageing PC or Apple Mac to boot, thinking “maybe its time to buy another one?”. You can pick up a new PC for less than £200… with an operating system, which seems crazy cheap but in this age of throw away tech, it seems to be the way that most manufacturers are moving. Even the high end MacBook Pro laptops are not built as well as you might think, but their price point suggests otherwise.

What if you could repurpose your old laptop, PC or Apple Mac to be as fast as the day it were born? There is no special magic or sauce here. No clever dongle that promises to boost the speed of all the components on board. The potential solution comes from something called Linux.

You may have heard of Linux or perhaps Ubuntu. Linux is another Operating system, just like Mac OS or Windows. The difference is that most Linux distributions (we call them distros) are free to download and install. They come with a raft of tools to rival many Microsoft or Apple software and if installed correctly, Linux can provide a boost of speed and give new purpose to an otherwise perfectly good but ageing computer.

Now, lets be clear, you’re not going to get Microsoft Internet Explorer or Edge. Your not going to get Word, Excel, Powerpoint or Outlook on Linux (at least not yet), but you can get some very good alternatives such as Libre Office for your Office siute replacement, Mozilla Firefox or Chromium to replace Internet Explorer/Edge and Mozilla Thunderbird to replace Outlook for email, making this a perfectly useable internet ready PC once more.

If you’re confident to have a go at installing Linux yourself, then head over to https://www.ubuntu.com/#download and download the desktop version yourself. However if you would like to discuss this further, drop us a line and we can provide a personalised quotation for installing a new Linux operating system and all the software you may need.