Posted on July 9th, 2010“This is a major, major breakthrough.”
– Patrick Lo, CEO, Netgear
We are still scratching our heads over what the major breakthrough is, honestly. But Netgear’s CEO says there is one, so who are we to argue? The statement was said in reference to their new line of ReadyNas storage systems that store upto 12 TB.
Going the Apple way?
Netgear seems to be taking a few leaves out of Apple’s books when it comes to marketing. Apart from the wildly exaggerated aforementioned statement, they have realized that it makes no sense to compete in a highly intense market on price alone. That’s why they are touting their storage devices as much more than that.
Netgear is looking to make storage devices appealing to the mass market, most of which still looks at such hardware as something for the geeks. While we are still skeptical of this being a major break-through, we have to give it to Netgear for introducing the first ever to offer Skifta media-shifting capabilities.
“This enables users to access their private media libraries remotely from any DLNA certified device without worrying about the physical location of their content.”
– Drew Meyer, spokesperson, Netgear
More than just storage
There’s the much marketed media capabilities mentioned above which allow the users to access their media from anywhere. Apart from that, they also have tie-ups with TiVo and Orb.
A tie-up with TiVo means that users can lock their ReadyNas box to a single TiVo box and then use it to store as much streaked content as their hardware will allow. With the huge TiVo user base, this should work well for Netgear. We are sure plenty of users will dig the humongous space they are providing.
Another tie-up with Orb lets users stream files to any mobile devices including mobile phones, tablets, etc.
Then there’s the 1.66 GHz Intel Atom processor coupled with 1 GB RAM. Full X-RAID2 functionality ensures data protection.
These things make the ReadyNas line so much more than simple storage devices. Maybe that’s what they need to succeed in the cut-throat storage devices’ market.
No free lunch
All these capabilities do not come cheap, though. The ReadyNas Ultra 4 (2×2 TB) will sell at $900, while the Ultra six (3×2 TB) will be a further $450. There’s an Ultra 2 planned for October if you are patient enough. But seriously, who can wait that long for one of these slick machines?