I replaced my aging NUC with a Minisforum SFF box and am also very happy with it. Footprint is slightly larger, but actually find it much quieter. The NUC was basically silent 90% of the time too, but it had an annoying high pitched whine if you were doing something very CPU-intensive.
Depending on model they can support up to 2 m.2s and a 2.5" drive.
I use Duplicati and backup server to both another PC and the cloud. Unlike a lot of data hoarders I take a pretty minimalist approach to only backing up core (mostly docker) configs and OS installation.
I have media lists but to me all that content is ephemeral and easily re-acquired so I don’t include it.
That’s a little harsh but I definitely agree it doesn’t tend to offer a better or equal alternative to any free options available. You’re giving up a certain level of ease of use.
Yup, if you just use a couple different IPs in a given time they will arbitrarily mark you as requiring a license.