I have one of these and love it, especially after I once bricked it during a manual software update and got to use the dip switch reset to reflash it using the ROM.
I wish it had more ethernet ports but I've managed to live with that. I'd be up for buying an OpenWrt Two as a backup or to replace this if it has even one more LAN jack.
I agree - we're coming up on 20 years of the ribbon, it is too jarring to go back to the fixed toolbars and the vast majority of computer users have no experience with the "old way."
My experience with Zotero was similar - I tried adding my ebook library to it as an alternative to Calibre because I really want to sort of categorize and easily reference my books and/or get like library call number groupings which is not trivial with Calibre.
I deleted it after it only found about half of my books, which incidentially is my chief problem with Calibre.
Someday I will write an indexer with either a web search tool or an LLM interface to better find info on my books but for now I just spend too much time browsing through the files which makes me sad (but not sad enough yet to overcome the laziness)
In the years between the Synology and the Ugreen I've been running a mac mini from ebay which has slower copy speeds (i had to use drives connected via usb or thunderbolt) but has been very reliable and low-power.
I just got a Ugreen 2800 to replace a homemade NAS, I had a Synology for a few years but it got slower and slower as the software changed so I ditched it maybe 10 years ago?
One of the things that sold me on the Ugreen was that it is basically just a garden-variety N100 box, upgradeable RAM, supports SATA and M.2, etc.
I wish it had more ethernet ports but I've managed to live with that. I'd be up for buying an OpenWrt Two as a backup or to replace this if it has even one more LAN jack.