In the past I have remarked that the web interface software has been lacking and against other competitors in the NAS game, well, trailing. With the release of the N0503, Thecus has made note that the interface has been redone and now new, improved and with AJAX technology. With hardware, Thecus has never failed to deliver, but unfortunately it has to be said that Thecus’ software has a lot of room for improvement. Prior to the N0503, the interface was not the best, but by any means terrible. It worked, it was responsive and everything you wanted to do could be done with only a few clicks. Though not excellent, it worked. With the N0503 things have taken a turn in the wrong direction.

Let’s have quick tour.

First, we will of course need to log into the device.

After logging into the system, the browser will be directed to the main page. This page outlines basic information.

For the sake of comparison, we will begin with a side by side picture of both the new interface and the interface used on pervious units.

Besides the unfinished appearance the new interface complicates sub menus quite a bit breaking functions and features into further classifications adding needless entries to the main menu. As we discussed in the features section, this is a unit packed to the top with features. As one can expect, the web interface is comprehensive and frankly at times the N0503′s interface was quite frustrating. To go through each and every function will be beyond the scope of this article, but we will walk through common functions and setup.

In the storage menu, under the disks heading the interface displays the disks attached to the system, disk health and diagnostic checking. To setup a RAID array, click the RAID heading.

In the case of a multi array system the user can select the particular disks to use. We will be dealing with a three drive array.

With settings configured, hitting create prompts the unit to begin creation of array.

With the array setup the user will then have to setup folders and access permission.

Network settings are located under the System Network menu.

And on the System Info page, we have a breakdown of system status with uptime, fan health, CPU load and running services.

The iTunes server is listed under Application server and is recognized in iTunes as a shared location.

For those who do not use iTunes, not to worry as the media player can simply be pointed to the network location.

For instance, Foobar2000.

Besides the fact that perhaps I simply have grown accustomed to the old interface, I did find the N0503′s interface clunky and slow. Consistently, we have found Thecus’ interface to the falling point of an excellent product. I would truly like to see this remedied. Maybe take some tips from QNAP, I won’t tell.

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