You won't see the blinding speed when you're poking around the main UI or some of Google's apps, as they're occasionally nonresponsive, although screen transitions are a bit more fluid than on other Android tablets.
I wonder when this will finally be solved. Previously, the lag was blamed on poor hardware. With this beast, that excuse really does not hold at all anymore.
I do have a ZFS setup of currently 6 disks and I really recommend buying server-grade HDDs, unless you have set up a monitoring system that tells you whenever a HDD is failing so you can buy a new one.
Until half a year ago I used normal USB HDDs that you can buy everywhere. My experience was that they simply aren't meant to be always on and fail pretty soon. I usually had a failed HDD once every quarter year. It drove me mad. Almost one year ago I started using these HDD docks where you can put two 2,5" or 3,5" HDDs into and bought HDDs that where labeled for server use. After half a year they still ran fine, so each time a normal USB HDD failed I replaced it with another dock. Haven't had a single failure since then. Nice bonus: double the amount of HDDs I can connect to the server (speed isn't so much an issue as space in my case). The solution with these docks with better HDDs costs more at first but turns out to be cheaper in the long run.
They're dominating the market, but it's not a monopoly (any more, now that there are more competitors).
If you play the game, you have to play by the rules. Nobody forces anybody to use the AppStore. It's the developer's decision (I know because I do play this game). But if you want to distribute your app through it you have to obey to Apple's rules, it's their playground.
You can always use Cydia instead or serve a different platform (Android, Nokia, RIM, WP7) if you don't like Apple or the AppStore.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." -- Edsel Murphy
