Jon,
I’ve had my Vera since Nov-2008, and also “started small”. I lurked in the forums for about 7 months before I finally pulled the pin and got a real account, but I’ve upgraded through a ton of intermediate versions (etc) without ever replacing/upgrading the HW.
The V1 that I have is not that different from the V2 HW, as others have pointed out.
Switch ports.
V1 has a 4 Port switch, in addition to the “WAN” link
V2 has a 1 Port switch, in addition to the “WAN” link
USB ports.
V1 has 1 USB Port spare (as the other is consumed by the ZWave Dongle)
V2 has 2 USB Ports spare (since the ZWave radio is embedded)
Size
V1 is physically larger, since it’s essentially an ASUS 500G Premium
V2 is a different enclosure
CPU Speed.
From what I can tell, they’re they same
ZWave Firmware Flashing.
V1 Dongle has to be put into a PC to Firmware flash upgrade it.
V2 Embedded ZWave controller can apparently be upgraded “in place” by Vera
If you’re going to put this thing inside a Structured Wiring Closet, then the V1 might be a better option, since you can put the Dongle on a standard USB-Extension cable (as I have) and have the rest inside the [RF proof] Metal Enclosure.
Vera isn’t my Primary Router, so I really don’t use Vera’s Switch ports on the back.
This is mostly because:
a) I “play” with it a lot.
Changing Firmwares, writing Plugins (Etc) leads to lots of downtime (for me) as I write things, bounce services etc.
This likely isn’t a typical usage, but it’s common for me
b) My Primary Router (etc) is much more secure, since it’s focussed on being a Router/Firewall (actually part of a double layer)
I keep my Router OS fully upgraded and it’s much more modern/feature full than the stuff running on Vera.
… but there are many people here who do, so folks seem to be split on the fence as to which is the “better” one for them, depending upon their particular needs.