Policy regarding OS X on non-Apple Hardware


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That's Apple's fault, not the fault of the user. :) There are copies of OSX sitting on the shelf at Best Buy that you can just go in and purchase. They do not ask you at the register if you own a Mac, just like they don't ask you if you own a computer when you buy PC software...

I know that but I'm just saying that if this starts happening a lot then Apple might resort to higher prices, product keys, or activation in future versions of OS X.

The problem with allowing this discussion that most people don't seem to realize is that Apple subsidizes the cost of OS X through the sale of their hardware. That's why OS X cost $129 while a full version of Vista Ultimate is much more expensive. I don't know if Apple actually makes money selling OS X at $129 compared to the amount of research and development that goes into it but the purpose of OS X is not to sell as a standalone product but to sell hardware. Now if people use OSx86 and then end up buying a Mac then nothing is really lost but if these people don't end up buying a Mac then we could end up seeing a higher price, product keys, or activation in the future.

Microsoft subsidizes the cost of Windows through OEMs - home builders can buy OEM copies of Vista/XP for about half of retail, and for companies like Dell/HP, etc the cost is probably much less.

People would pirate Windows is it was $50 - same will happen with Apple, OSx86 or not, if nothing else, the easist way to pirate OSX is on Apple HW. Piracy will occur no matter what Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Autodesk intend to do.

They are just annoyed that they have paid over the odds for basic pc hardware and now people can spend ?150 on leopard and run it on their own PCs.

Have you ever seen first hand (not pictures) the inside of a Mac Pro? It is so far from 'basic'. It's an amazingly designed computer. Just like anything else in life... some people pay more for better design even if perceived 'horse power' is a little less... It's the same way with all sorts of electronics... even cars for that matter.

While I'm not entirely against OSx86, because I think that it will hopefully bring interesting stuff to the table from apple, I am against warez, and I think that this is stepping dangerously close to the line.

I would also hope that Neowin could create just one more forum in the Apple section, just labelled OSx86 or something, so that the genuine apple software/hardware discussions don't get flooded with OSx86 queries. This is because some of us bought OS X for "Hardware/Software compatibility" reason, and thus don't want our thread bombed with driver issues spam....

Just a question to the Staff here... Will the OSx86 community be posting in the Mac Setups thread? Or will they have their own, because part of the 'Mac Setup' thread's allure is all the beautiful apple hardware, is it not?

Also, in reply to "richard hammond"'s comment about basic pc hardware in shiny package: I'll continue to buy apple...I like their hardware. Also, the closest equivalent of something as consumer as the iMac (the *rip off* dell 'one', is beaten hands down by the iMac).

OSX is roughly (give or take a few ?) the same price as OEM Vista Home Premium.

Apple have the family pack of OSX which is more expensive, Microsoft have retail versions which are more expensive. Seems fairly even to me.

Leopard is $129 for the standalone version and $199 for the family pack while Vista Ultimate is $399 for the full version going by retail prices. Of course you can get Vista for much cheaper with an OEM copy but you can also get Leopard at cheaper prices with the student discount or through other places. I guess I can't really complain as I have a MSDN copy of Vista Ultimate on my PC at home that I got from work since it wasn't being used and I will probably install Leopard on that PC also since I don't have a Mac that is capable of running Leopard yet.

Yeah, as long as you use enough "winks" when you talk about the imaginary "installation disk", then people will know you are really talking about warez downloading.

Yeah, and I wonder just how many people here are running Windows legit. Hell, some people here openly admit to pirating Windows. And as I said before, I'm pretty damn sure that everyone here who has a copy of Adobe Photoshop didn't pay $400 for it or $649 for Dreamweaver.

So yes, let's just use these "winks" as if this is the first time it has ever been done. Apparently, no piracy occurred when people said to get XP/Vista or some other software.

Have you ever seen first hand (not pictures) the inside of a Mac Pro? It is so far from 'basic'. It's an amazingly designed computer. Just like anything else in life... some people pay more for better design even if perceived 'horse power' is a little less... It's the same way with all sorts of electronics... even cars for that matter.

Having seen the insides of a modern Mac, I'll happily agree that they are certainly well built and tidy inside, but they aren't exactly using the top of the line components. I can build a far superior machine using far superior components and far more prettily, for far far less cost.

That's my only bugbear with Mac's really. They are seriously overpriced for what you get.

Yeah, and I wonder just how many people here are running Windows legit. Hell, some people here openly admit to pirating Windows. And as I said before, I'm pretty damn sure that everyone here who has a copy of Adobe Photoshop didn't pay $400 for it or $649 for Dreamweaver.

So yes, let's just use these "winks" as if this is the first time it has ever been done. Apparently, no piracy occurred when people said to get XP/Vista or some other software.

Please don't quote my post to make it sound like I am only concerned about OSX piracy. I have complained about Windows piracy. And about Photoshop, as well (I mean, some kid really plunked down many hundreds of dollars when they have no concept of layers or transparency).
Having seen the insides of a modern Mac, I'll happily agree that they are certainly well built and tidy inside, but they aren't exactly using the top of the line components. I can build a far superior machine using far superior components and far more prettily, for far far less cost.

That's my only bugbear with Mac's really. They are seriously overpriced for what you get.

A computer you build yourself will always be cheaper than a retail option. But just from my curiosity, I'd like to see that computer you're talking about.

The problem with allowing this discussion that most people don't seem to realize is that Apple subsidizes the cost of OS X through the sale of their hardware. That's why OS X cost $129 while a full version of Vista Ultimate is much more expensive. I don't know if Apple actually makes money selling OS X at $129 compared to the amount of research and development that goes into it but the purpose of OS X is not to sell as a standalone product but to sell hardware. Now if people use OSx86 and then end up buying a Mac then nothing is really lost but if these people don't end up buying a Mac then we could end up seeing a higher price, product keys, or activation in the future.

Vista ultimate is more expensive because microsoft pricing strategy is just like that. Linux is free. I guess it would be hard to tell how much a license of an OS should cost.

Microsoft overprices windows to no end, the only reasonable windows prices are those of OEM versions.

And let's not forget that parts of OS X are based on BSD, so much for the "amount of research and development". Although, again, if we were to price all OSs based on R+D, their cost would be infinite. Yet linux is free.

I have to say I disagree with this. I'm willing to say whoever has a Hackintosh has not obtained OS X legally, therefor any discussion of it would fall under the warez category. Like .fahim said, the EULA is a contract that you agree to, and breaking it would be against the law. Personally, I think this is a big step backwards. I'm curious as to what Cara has to say.

Oh and I'm with StevoFC on this. Thanks for telling people they need to put the [OSx86] tag on their post - it's going to be a big help in letting me know which threads to ignore. ;)

Thats what you get for assuming, i have 3 free copies of Leopard I got from work for being the "Apple Expert" 2 of which are single and one is the family pack. So i guess mine arent legal? Ive done the hackintosh thing but was pointless IMO.

And I love how some of the older members here are saying "oh well i wont help them because its probably illegal" you do realize that half of the people here are running pirated windows, either xp or vista yet you guys help them all the time. Same with people running windows on a mac, you know half of them are running illegal software, so why cant you help someone running hackintosh? So when someone needs help are we going to be so nazi about it we ask for a scan of the cd and their name by it? If i go into a mac thread asking for help with osx am i going to be immediately targeted as a pirate?

Thats what you get for assuming, i have 3 free copies of Leopard I got from work for being the "Apple Expert" 2 of which are single and one is the family pack. So i guess mine arent legal? Ive done the hackintosh thing but was pointless IMO.

And I love how some of the older members here are saying "oh well i wont help them because its probably illegal" you do realize that half of the people here are running pirated windows, either xp or vista yet you guys help them all the time. Same with people running windows on a mac, you know half of them are running illegal software, so why cant you help someone running hackintosh? So when someone needs help are we going to be so nazi about it we ask for a scan of the cd and their name by it? If i go into a mac thread asking for help with osx am i going to be immediately targeted as a pirate?

I agree. :)

I wonder how many of Mac users actually bought Leopard when they upgraded from Tiger. :whistle:

Having seen the insides of a modern Mac, I'll happily agree that they are certainly well built and tidy inside, but they aren't exactly using the top of the line components. I can build a far superior machine using far superior components and far more prettily, for far far less cost.

That's my only bugbear with Mac's really. They are seriously overpriced for what you get.

If you can build a superior looking machine... you should submit your resume to the Apple Design team I'm sure they are open to new ideas.

Sorry for bringing old posts up, it's just the first time I found time to respond. That's the disadvantage of a community making 70 000 posts a month.

Yes. And if I had to guess I would say she won't be happy at all with this decision. And it definitely doesn't make much sense to **** off the most informed Apple/OS X user here.

Support for all things Apple will drop significantly here because of this. I for one, will not help anyone I am even suspicious of using OSX86.

I actually feel the same way. I've been a Windows user for many years and still am, well I have a laptop around with Windows installed. When I decided to use Mac I had heard about the whole "Hackintosh" community but decided not to step into it and bought me a Macbook. Now I own 3 Apple computers already and it's good to have them.

Please guys - and this is not to start a flamewar - if you want Mac OS X - and I understand you do - get an Apple. It's not that they are that expensive or that ugly or ... .

And since when Cara speak for Neowin or Apple? Never, she speaks for herself.

She or the poster referring to her blog never said they were speaking for Neowin and/or Apple.

My concern is the (potential) flood of x86 posts clogging up the Apple Forums. x86 is not Apple related, it is different hardware and software from official distributions of Mac OS from Apple. People can argue this all they way, if you are required to use an EFI Emulator then you are not running the software Native and thus it is not the official method of running it.

I would also like to see a separate forum for x86 because of the flood which may - and probably will - happen. Also, when there is a separate forum it's easier to circumvent the posts. I just won't enter the forum.

I feel that in order to best serve the Apple community here on Neowin, if this topic is going to be allowed there does indeed need to be a x86 forum created for simplicity. How does adding a forum make things more simple? It keeps these threads out of the way of Apple users and allows the x86 community to have their own identity away from Apple users. I feel that many real Apple owners will refuse to aid x86 users, as is their right, and I feel that moving those threads into their own section will cut down on the potential for flame or hostile posting as a result.

Indeed. The disagreements between x86 users and "real" Apple users may grow to a level causing inappropriate discussions and I, for one, would not like to see that happen. I've always loved the Mac subforum for the support, news but also for the extensive amount of friendship and the low level flame baiting.

I'm all for a subforum, if the need arises. :)

Well, that's good to hear.

Ps. Is the Mac OS X desktop thread now open for x86 screenshots? It was so handy to have a desktop thread that doesn't get flooded with 2 pages in 30 minutes.

is it me or are the people getting upset the apple fanboys? I dont understand why it ruffles your feathers now that neowin supports hackintosh?

It took a while for such comment to arise.

I'm not disappointed nor am I sad, I'm only expressing my opinion about the mix of x86 and genuine Apple hardware/software in the Apple forum.

Yeah, and I wonder just how many people here are running Windows legit. Hell, some people here openly admit to pirating Windows. And as I said before, I'm pretty damn sure that everyone here who has a copy of Adobe Photoshop didn't pay $400 for it or $649 for Dreamweaver.

So yes, let's just use these "winks" as if this is the first time it has ever been done. Apparently, no piracy occurred when people said to get XP/Vista or some other software.

Anyone on Neowin who openly admits to pirating Windows (or anything else for that matter) is asking for trouble around here.

Please don't quote my post to make it sound like I am only concerned about OSX piracy. I have complained about Windows piracy. And about Photoshop, as well (I mean, some kid really plunked down many hundreds of dollars when they have no concept of layers or transparency).

Oh, I know you have. It's just that you're making it sound like every hackintosh will be run with a pirated copy of OS X which is obviously not true. There will be people who buy it and people who pirate it. Same with... well, just about every piece of software, movie, song, etc.

I am looking at what I have in software at my house and I don't find anything pirated.

I work for an indie game studio and I know how much it costs in time, efforts, testing and how much you need to be passionate about your product to get it retailed. I won't ever pirate a software.

I can't really understand how you can think about buying OS X if you don't know if it will run on your computer. I think most (more than 90 %) of people using OSX86 have pirated the software. IMHO, any way of circumventing any kind of software protection is illegal. Even more if in the EULA it is written that you are not allowed to do it.

To answer someone who posted before, I have all these softwares and none of them is pirated :

- Windows Vista (yes, I must have a PC to test on all major platforms)

- Windows XP

- Mac OS 10.5

- Unity 3D (An excellent 3D software development tool)

- Cheetah3D

- Pixelmator 1.2

- Mac Office 2008

- Microsoft Office 2007

- Dreamweaver

- Quicktime Pro

- World of Warcraft (I make games and play them too)

- Civilization IV

- Puzzlequest : Challenge of the Warlords

And I also bought my share of games on my Wii and my Xbox 360.

And no, I don't have Adobe Photoshop because I don't really need it.

Anyone on Neowin who openly admits to pirating Windows (or anything else for that matter) is asking for trouble around here.

In that case if no one admits to pirating leopard we should receive the same help everyone else gets with asking for windows help, photoshop help, dreamweaver help.

If you can build a superior looking machine... you should submit your resume to the Apple Design team I'm sure they are open to new ideas.

So what you are saying is that the look of the physical box is much more important than the guts of the box.

For me, it's the opposite.

Oh, I know you have. It's just that you're making it sound like every hackintosh will be run with a pirated copy of OS X which is obviously not true. There will be people who buy it and people who pirate it. Same with... well, just about every piece of software, movie, song, etc.

It is STILL wrong to pirate anything.

It is illegal to take drugs, it is illegal to steal a bike, it is illegal to download pirated songs,...

They are all ILLEGAL activities.

Breaking an EULA agreement is illegal too.

If you can't respect and comply with an EULA, don't use the software.

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It seems like other customers have lodged complaints about them, as TerraMaster now includes two spare rubber feet in the box, in case any of the preinstalled ones are lost; however, this seems more like a papering over the cracks solution rather than actually fixing the issue with better quality rubber stand-offs. There are also four screws that must be removed in order to access the internals. Teardown Upon removing the four screws, you can slide the device out of its shell to reveal the three NVMe M.2 slots (PCIe 3.0 X1) and single SODIMM slot connector, which is populated with a single 16GB DDR5 4800MT/s module. I added a couple of MP44Q M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs (2 x 4TB) that can be availed on Amazon for $492.99 that TEAMGROUP supplied us with, along with a 250GB 970 Evo Plus that my colleague Chris White sent me by accident and let me keep a few years ago. As I have said in previous reviews, TerraMaster support staff actually encourage installing whatever you want on their devices, and happily, the USB port for the bootloader is now easily accessible should you want to use it for your own flavor of NAS OS, such as TrueNAS, Unraid, or maybe Xpenology. Yes, because TerraMaster has now switched to a 256 GB NAND Flash card (3rd photo above) for the TOS bootloader. This is also replaceable, but you can also simply add a USB bootloader, access the BIOS, and tell the F4-425 Pro to boot from that instead of the Flash card. Unlike earlier iterations of TerraMaster NAS, you don't have to tear this down any further than the four screws on the outer shell in order to be able to access and manage the memory, NVMe slots, and USB bootloader. However, if you need to access the NAND Flash card or CMOS battery, then eight more screws (four on each side) need to be removed in order to take off the rear panel with the 120mm fan, and then the motherboard can be lifted off and removed from the SATA connector PCB. There's also no risk of threading the screw holes, because the four that hold the shell in place are metal on metal, while the screws that hold the rear panel on do screw into plastic. Either way, like last time when I reviewed the F4-425 plus, I was just happier to see larger screws being used. Overall, it follows some great improvements in build quality from the 2024 series and earlier. Setup BIOS The F4-425 Pro includes an Aptio BIOS from American Megatrends [1, 2], and you can setup pretty much everything here including the boot order, which is locked to the UEFI OS, however above that choice you can enable or disable booting to the USB bootloader so this would still allow you to switch to a USB stick with an alternative bootloader and boot from it, or disable it to instead always start from the first disk with an OS installed on it. Initial Setup Setup is roughly the same as the F4-425 Plus, along with the new TOS 7 setup dialogs, so there will be no surprises here. Upon connecting to the LAN and booting up, the F4-425 Pro can be reached by navigating to http://tnas.local. If that doesn't work, you can use the local address assigned via DHCP, which you can find using the TNAS PC desktop application, which is essentially a TerraMaster NAS finder. The setup process is pretty straightforward, through a wizard, and in full below: TOS 7 Initialization As you can see, TOS 7 received a new coat of paint, and the initialization requires fewer interactions. Happily, TOS no longer decides to throw all disks into the same Storage Pool; 2.5-inch HDDs are allocated into Storage Pool 1. This is because two of the HDDs are allocated to hold system files. Previously (with TOS 5 and 6), if you pre-installed HDDs and SSDs, they were all placed into Storage Pool 1, even if you did not select the SSDs for inclusion during the onboarding. TOS 7 Setup On first boot, there is a tutorial and some steps to take to harden the TNAS (or not), which includes an immediate update from TOS 7.0.0616 to 7.0.0706, of which the changelog screenshot is also included in the above gallery. It must be noted that the Security Advisor still contains (in my opinion) a pretty major bug in that if you enable SPC and then do the required rebooting, the Security Advisor still says that SPC is disabled. TerraMaster provided the following statement about it: It is disappointing that TOS 7 has been in beta since December, and this OOBE issue is still there. Shutdown option has moved Instead of a Taskbar option to manage the NAS, all of these options have been moved to the Control Panel, initially I did not see it and my contact had to show me how to power off the F4-425 Pro. To logout, reboot or power off you can find those controls at the top right of the Control Panel. It is also possible to power off through the TNAS mobile app beta. Storage setup Above, you can see the steps I took to create the Storage Pools and Volumes. I made a second Storage Pool using TRAID on two 4TB MP44Q SSDs (which, in this instance, is similar to RAID 5), and finally, I added the 250GB 970 Evo Plus drive as Hyper Cache on Storage Pool 1 in Balanced mode. Registering If you decide not to lock down the F4-425 Pro in Security Isolation Mode (blocking all external connections), then you could set up a TNAS device ID through the Remote Access setting in the Control Panel (which must be unique). This works in combination with an online TerraMaster account. TOS 7 TNAS Online Creating a TerraMaster account and linking the device online activates the warranty when you provide proof of purchase and the serial number, but it also gives you access through the TNAS mobile app, which allows you to complete certain operationsб including powering off and restarting the NAS remotely. A TNAS mobile update is required to gain access through TOS 7, and this is provided on the TerraMaster website, as it is not yet on Google Play. The app is evolving all the time and has made leaps and bounds since I first started reviewing TerraMaster devices almost three years ago. It is not quite there yet if you are comparing the likes of Synology, which, sadly, a lot of users online do all the time. OpenClaw setup One of the main selling points of the new F4-425 Pro is the inclusion of OpenClaw, with TerraMaster claiming that it is "powered by the world's first AI-native TOS 7 OS, supporting local-first smart workflows and independent data control." However, I immediately ran into problems trying to enable OpenClaw. After waiting 20 minutes at the "Enabling" message of the OpenClaw app following installation, I decided to do some searching online and discovered that it couldn't complete the installation process due to SPC being enabled, which is something TOS 7 immediately recommends to be enabled on first boot. SPC for NAS (TOS 7) is basically the same principle as UAC in Windows; it blocks executables from being launched by non-Super Users. After reaching out to my contact about these issues, I received the following response: Anyway, this only became clear when I closed the OpenClaw app screen and clicked on the OpenClaw icon in the taskbar; that is when I saw the message about disabling SPC. I think, due to the fact that this is a requirement, this should be a prompt during the installation process, not when closing the App Market and then trying to launch OpenClaw. There's also no 'Getting started' guide for people like me who have never used OpenClaw. I tried to add an LLM and discovered the tutorial led nowhere. That's when I started looking around the official TerraMaster forums, and I found a guide that helpfully explains that you won't get anywhere with OpenClaw unless you have a paid plan, which is disappointing because I imagined there would be an option to use a local LLM as I do in SubtitleEdit with Whisper-XXL. In addition, with the marketing imagery on the official site, it says that the OpenClaw feature is "all processed 100% locally for absolute privacy." which led me to believe that I could install a local LLM, not one that required paid tokens. In any case, TerraMaster does not provide guidance for this new feature, which was also a selling point of the F4-425 Pro! My contact also provided clarification about the above points I raised with TerraMaster Since it is not in the scope of the review to add paid services, I'll leave that to the people who are more qualified with OpenClaw. F4-425 Pro Surveillance App TOS also comes with a Surveillance app, which is not installed by default; it can be found in the App Market recommended section. In addition, after installing, it doesn't drop a shortcut on the Desktop or top taskbar, but you can "Send to Desktop" from the App Market listing for the app for a quick way to open it. Adding my Reolink POE doorbell camera was painless. TerraMaster doesn't appear to have a repository of preconfigured cameras; instead, the camera must be added using ONVIF or RTSP. No mobile Surveillance app TerraMaster still doesn't have a dedicated Surveillance app, although from searching online, Surveillance can be used and managed through the TNAS mobile app. I tried this with the updated TNAS mobile app beta in combination with TOS 7 and got a message that Surveillance was "Only accessible through web browser," so I reckon this must be limited to the stable versions of TOS 6 and the mobile app. More quirks In addition, whenever I minimized the Live View window in the browser Surveillance app, the feed appeared to switch to the Low-bandwidth stream, and there was no way to get the High-quality stream back. To get the High-quality stream back, I had to close Live View and then reopen it. Benchmarking A pretty cool feature of the TOS 7 is that it allows you to install directly to the NVMe M.2 SSD. In order to do that, you would have to leave out any HDDs during initialization, and even then, the system partitions are always written to two HDDs when they are eventually added. With three NVMe slots, this also gives an interesting scenario where you could build a TRAID storage Pool for installing all your apps and Docker on, and keep the third for SSD cache on the HDD pool. Limitless options! SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 5 GbE hub was well within acceptable ranges. Although the read result on SATA was a little less than with the F4-425 Plus, for some reason, while writes were generally better. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. TOS 7, which, as of testing, is still in Beta, comes with an App Center that has a bunch of handy programs you can install right off the bat, such as Emby, Plex, Docker, as well as in-house Backup and Surveillance solutions. As you can imagine, any media streaming services you would want to host off the F4-425 Pro will work great, thanks to the Intel Core N350 CPU and its 16 GB of DDR5 memory. Accessing from mobile is only possible if Security Isolation Mode is disabled, which can put your NAS at risk from external sources, so there was no way to access it from the TNAS Mobile app. It's also quiet. I had this sat next to my computer on my work desk for the past week, and I did wonder if the noise I was accustomed to with NAS devices would annoy me, but all I could hear was a soft whirring of the rear fan (which was a little annoying) when the disks were not actively copying or reading data. Conclusion So what have I learned? Unfortunately, this release raises a few important questions and concerns that I feel haven't been adequately addressed. What I didn't like Our variant shipped with TOS 7 beta, and it's advised not to use it in a production environment. I feel that's a bit limiting on an $800 device. The mobile app is also still in beta and does not support some of the first-party apps, like Surveillance, and it still has quite a few bugs. I am a bit confused about the OpenClaw marketing along with the F4-425 Pro. I feel like that if it's going to be a main selling point, then offer official guidance on how to get started with it. TerraMaster recommends enabling SPC, but then markets the NAS for use with OpenClaw, which requires disabling SPC to be able to use it, opening up genuine security concerns for the NAS; and that's before you get into the security concerns of OpenClaw itself. Of course, the above issues won't be a problem if you decide to install something else on it, or even go back to the stable TOS 6. I wish TerraMaster had just given TOS 7 as opt-in rather than shipping with it. TOS 7 has been available as a preview since December 2025 (so well before my last TerraMaster review), and according to a thread on Reddit where a user shared a screenshot from the TerraMaster Facebook page, it is scheduled to launch today, June 23, but there's nothing about that in the TerraMaster news blog. My contact confirmed over email that TOS 7 exits beta today. The rubber feet also deserve a mention as they continue to be a problem, with them coming unstuck the moment you shift the F4-425 Pro anywhere on your desk. What I liked What it comes down to, though, aside from what I already mentioned, you are still getting a quality, affordable device here, so recommending it will depend on the individual's use case. If you're just looking for a relatively small NAS device to manage virtual machines on, backup your files, and take care of your home theater streaming, then it is a great device that will certainly futureproof you for some time. It provides good performance, takes up little space, and is, on the whole, very quiet. Four bays afford proper redundancy using TRAID or RAID 5, and you can even expand on storage capacity by adding the 2-bay D5, or 4-bay D8 Hybrid DAS over a USB 3.2 (10Gbps) link. Considering the 2024 releases were more about power, with the likes of an Intel Core i5-1235U high-end laptop CPU under the hood, I asked my contact last time if we could expect more of the same in higher-end models and was told: It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N350 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the F4-425 Pro is intended for, media streaming and backup. The only downside is still the clear lack of community and even staff support on the official forums. In the past, I have had topics go unanswered for days, or there would be generic-type "we've noted this and passed it onto our developer team" type responses. Along with the other things I mentioned, it all ends up costing it a couple of points. If you are comfortable with the command line, Docker, and setting up TrueNAS or Unraid, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. In TOS, the apps are a bit lacking, and things don't always work as expected.\ AI NAS?! What has become clear to me this year is that we are going to start seeing all kinds of "AI NAS" come to market, and while that might be good for us consumers, be diligent and research these claims. Although the F4-425 Pro technically comes with AI, it is really using a cloud service that is externally sourced off-device through the third party OpenClaw app. My colleague did review a newcomer to the NAS space earlier this year, and it includes a local AI assistant inside the Zettlab D4 NAS, and they do not even use AI in the product name, check out Chris' review here. Where to buy and a discount coupon However, it does not change the fact that this is truly a great entry-level home media-class NAS that you can buy right now. TerraMaster is having a 20% off launch discount, plus you can also still apply our unique 10% off coupon on checkout, which only works on the official website. So here is a breakdown of the pricing that is only valid on the official TerraMaster website. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $575.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $503.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £525.59 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £460.79 Use NEOWIN coupon code during checkout for 10% discount Over on Amazon US and UK, the F4-425 Pro also gets a 20% launch discount, but here, the above 10% coupon cannot be applied. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for $639.99 at Amazon US (was $799.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for $559.99 at Amazon US (was $699.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for £583.99 at Amazon UK (was £729.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for £511.99 at Amazon UK (was £639.99) As an Amazon Associate, when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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