NAS Units as VM Hosts: QNAP's Virtualization Station Explored

Virtualization has been around since the 1960s, but it wasn't till Intel and AMD started introducing hardware acceleration features that the feature started gaining mainstream focus outside enterprise applications. In addition to several applications in the enterprise space, virtualization has also started to lower the cost of IT infrastructure even for SMBs (think in terms of virtualized Exchange servers and similar applications). However, does the current state of virtualization offer any applications / benefits to home users? What are the ways in which regular users can take advantage of it? The answer to the second question is partly provided by QNAP's Virtualization Station package in the TS-x51 series. The answer to the first question will decide whether the Virtualization Station package can offer compelling enough benefits for users to choose the QNAP TS-x51 series over competing models from other vendors.