Hi everyone. My name is Phillip and I live in Market Harborough in the UK - a small market town between Leicester and Northampton. I am a retired head of computing in a Leicestershire school.
I have had three different DS boxes over the years, all two drive units. I started with a basic 'se' model, then went on to a 'j' model and after realising how much I used my NAS I bought a DS218+, upgraded the memory and popped in 2 x 4TB WD Red drives. My thinking is that I prefer small, very fast local drives in my computers and files stored on the NAS. My main computer is an iMac and I have a 2012 Mac Mini I use as a Plex server - media files are stored on the NAS. My iMac is setup to dual boot into Windows for the odd occasions when I need to use it. I have Windows installed an a USB 3 SSD drive.
Over the past year my aim has been to rid myself of the pernicious influence of Google and its data-gathering shenanigans. To this end I moved from Android to iOS and installed NextCloud on my NAS to use for calendars, contacts and files and it syncs beautifully with my other devices. A perfect Google replacement. I use NoteStation to store all manner of things and it is an excellent alternative to Evernote. I use DS Photo to store my best photos going back years and I now use no Google Services at all.
I'm hoping this forum will grow to be as useful as the German synology-forum.de which I occasionally use with the help of Google Translate.