Re: Comparison with "real" servers
This is it. A lot of small businesses work from home. Their office is in the spare room or in an extension if they are lucky. Often its not more than a cupboard. They do not want another PC/Server running burning up power when a simple 2 drive NAS box in RAID 1 can quietly hum along sipping 25w.
Only does simple file sharing? Erm that's all a lot of people need, a central place to store files on that are accessible to all the PCs and a place to do daily PC/laptop backups to. Works a lot better than when they had all the files on Sharon's PC and it ground to a halt every 5 minutes from sharing.
DLNA? Torrent Clients? iTunes server? Not important.
These are usually people that have just worked out what a USB stick is. Yes it is that raw out there.
It's all about simple progression as businesses grow and IT confidence grows along side it.