What are your thoughts about Buffalo TeraStations in a business setting?

[yadav12]

We have twenty branch offices spread over the state, each with 5 to 15 users. We want to shift away from local storage and toward more centralised storage for our users, who now store everything on their desktops. While each branch office has a VPN connection to our main office, we'd like to instal a central file server at each branch to reduce VPN connection overhead. We're likewise on a Server 2008 domain, with a mix of Windows XP and 7 workstations.

We don't have any money set aside for this, therefore we'd like to keep it as low-cost as possible without losing quality or security.Since the Buffalo TeraStations allow Active Directory authentication, we've been keeping an eye on them. I've previously read on this site that people despised them and that they were incredibly vulnerable. Are there any verifiable claims here? What about the ReadyNAS series from Netgear? As much as I enjoy OSS, I'd want to avoid FreeNAS (and other free alternatives) because we want something that is guaranteed and supported.

What are your honest thoughts on the storage appliances in Buffalo? Is anyone using them at their place of business? Do you have any more suggestions? Thank you very much!