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As part of his keynote address Sunday at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, Gates is showing off Windows Home Server--a consumer device to serve as a central storage place for digital photos, music and other media. The first products are due out later this year from Hewlett-Packard and others. The goal is to get devices that can cost less than $500.
In the first of a two-part interview, Microsoft's chairman talks with CNET News.com about why the average person wants a server, why they won't need a degree in computer science to run it and what hurdles remain before consumers reach the true digital home.
Gaga for gadgets
Click here for photos, videos
and more from CES 2007.
Coming Monday, in part two, Gates talks about the changes that are coming with Windows Vista, the legacy of Windows XP and what he has planned for the next makeover of his own digital living room.
Q: One of the things you are talking about at CES is a new home server? Why does the average home need a server?
Gates: If you have got multiple PCs, then you want files that are available all the time no matter which PCs are turned on or off, and you'd also like to have a server that when you just add storage it automatically takes advantage of that. You don't have to think about drive names or moving files around
In fact you get redundancy so that even if you have physical failures you have recoverability.
Does that mean that every home is going to need a server administrator?
Gates: No it's important to look hard at what the focus of that device has been, which is the easy setup and no ongoing need to worry about it at all. Remote access has been hard to set up. We've focused in on that. Making it so that it is all recoverable has been hard. Adding storage has been hard. We feel great about what we've done in this product. We think it is a real leadership product. Homes with multiple PCs will find it very attractive.
Having the right hardware is obviously one piece of the puzzle. In terms of getting the types of things that people want to share across the home, one of the keys is content. Are things where they need to be yet? Is Hollywood where it needs to be?
Gates: There's this challenge of balancing the need of creative people to get paid for their work and the ease of use that people want moving these things around between devices. No one has gotten people to agree to something that strikes a perfect balance there. We're encouraging the content companies to actually take a little bit more risk and be more flexible in those things. That's a little bit of an impediment.
In terms of the idea of a home server, is this really mainstream? How long is it before 10 percent, say, of households have a home server?
Gates: That's a good question. As you get a product that's, say, well under $1,000, viewed as just dead simple to use, I think a reasonable percentage of multiple PC homes will find this very attractive. But, we're entering the market new.
We don't know the volume, but we think it enables some scenarios, and it will be a good business for us. Obviously, a lot of the technology we use there we get to use in servers that are used in business-type environments as well.
You're talking about Microsoft's traditional approach where you guys do the software and other folks do the hardware. Do companies like Apple that do both the hardware and the software--do they have any kind of advantage when it comes to entertainment-type scenarios?
Gates: They have a huge disadvantage in the kind of variety--design points, price points, distribution approaches. They just don't get that. They do get to do this tightly coupled monolithic design. What we have to make sure is that we are working with the partners so we get that creativity of the close coupling while the variety of partners is such that we get something they really don't have.
If you want to point to why the Windows PC has become such a successful, central thing, that enabling of partners, including all those great hardware partners, I'd say that's been very big.
Here you see Toshiba doing SideShow (a Vista feature that enables a secondary display). You see Sony doing this beautiful Media Center, living room-type device. You see HP bringing in this touch-screen capability on a very nice form factor. This show kind of gives you a sense that the world needs variety when there are hundreds of millions of these things that are being sold.
Does Microsoft need to tie more of its entertainment products together? For instance, you have a media center that can record television (programs). Shouldn't I be able to get that content and take it with me on the Zune?
Gates: Absolutely. There's a lot of scenarios that we can drive that make these things more connected. I think almost all our announcements here have this connected theme to them. Just take Xbox 360. It's an extender for any PC in the house to project that into the living room. It can let you watch high-definition movies that you download. It can let you connect up your HD DVD player. You play the best games standalone and live. And, the new announcement is that this is an IPTV set-top box. So our partners in IPTV let you have your full TV experience with the power of Xbox there.
See more CNET content tagged:
Bill Gates, Consumer Electronics Show, chairman, server, photograph
If someone needs a file server or whatever, they can easily do it right now for ~$25 with a used xbox and linux.
The home server is great idea to centralize and backup a household of data.
That will be cheaper and safer than the MS thingy, and you learn a lot about computers.
She probably doesn't need a server, just an external drive to back up those pictures, but there are people out there who need a solution, and these folks may not have the technical acumen to even deal with what MS is proposing, much less your solution.
Honestly, I think MS's solution will be like the first version of Media Center, long on promise and short on features, but two things will happen. First, their solution will get better over time, and more importantly it will motivate the industry to move more aggresively into this niche.
And I'd love to know your definition of "easy" if you consider easy for the average consumer to install a Linux server in a used Xbox.
I don't see you asking a company like Apple such a question.
Though I see many homes with some type of server PC in the future (growing digital content everywhere), I will not hold my breath waiting for MS to make it easy to use and setup.
If you want something that most everything you want very easily (providing Apple decides you want it) and money is not as important a factor -- Apple
If you want something that is somewhere in-between -- Microsoft
They won't have to be a geek because the'll be buying Apple servers which can easily be setup and administrated by any average user unlike Billy's servers which require an MSCE to get more than the basic use out of.
But then, my home already has a server and being a Geek, I'm very happy with my Unix doing everything Apple/Windows servers do but better.
also by using it to store all your files, you can stop your pc being bogged down with files and stop it running slower
or at least thats what i think it will mean
around for years. Of course, Microsoft's is more
complex than many of the existing plug-and-play
solutions, but they're a new player.
The bad idea part is that the unit is
essentially a Windows PC with a little dressed
up Webmin-style sugar on top. Bad because their
vision includes a unit that draws as much power
as a standard PC, generates as much heat, and
one that is complex (relatively speaking)
without giving a commensurate amount of user
control and flexibility.
I bet it will sell a little bit, but I can't
imagine that it will be very competitive in this
area. Most of the people that don't already have
something like this, yet who are going to see a
use for such a thing, are likely to shop around
and read-up on it, and that will be bad for
sales.
I know personally getting people with little to no computer experience to even UNDERSTAND the idea behind a "server" is difficult. And anyone with MORE experience, will probably just build their own. (like in examples in other comments here)
Just my 2 cents...
Not sure how it is since I no longer buy Microsoft product so I don't own a Xbox.
PC architecture overkill and
consumes too much power for a home 24/7 device.
A cheap ~<1GHz Embedded processor with a 16MB software (linux + licensed server software)
can do everything.
Much much quieter and cheaper too.
Buffalo already has this.
Apple can do this easily with good design.
Just ensure expandability and ease of use.
Microsoft is trying to sell this item as a plug and play server. So I have to ask myself: "When the heck has Microsoft ever made the server side easier?" The answer, of course, is never.
I look at this four ways:
1) It is or probably will be based around Vista, which means the hardware is going to be more expensive than if based on another, less all-controlling OS
2) It's a server - will I have the same ease-of-use if I was to plug my Mac, my Linux box and my SunOS box into it? I seriously doubt it. In the past, MS has purposely broken this kind of functionality to further its monopoly. They've made my past life a living hell on this point, so why would I trust them now? Why would I think they're even capable of interoperability? And if they manage it, why should I expect it to last any longer than is convenient for Microsoft?
3) DRM. Microsoft's position on digital rights management is about as onerous as any out there. And yet they're pushing this as a media storage appliance. So the first time I get the message that I'm not allowed to copy my dvd movie onto it, or that I've played my song twice already and the system is going to delete it, how am I supposed to react? Except of course, to yell at an inanimate object and boot the darn box across the room.
4) Isn't this just the beginning of a world with the MS thin client? Hmmm.
So why buy Microsoft in the first place? Thanks, but I'll wait until someone else does it.
2) I don't have to buy licenses from MSFT to operate it
3) I can put whatever hardware I want into it
4) It doesn't phone home to MSFT or any other OS vendor to tell them what all is on it
/P
it's a freeware
converts any windows PC into a web host
pretty cool!
to be but, at the end of the day (literally) it'll be Apple that actually
releases their products for us to buy and take home to use.
Watch the Keynote at MacWorld when it's available and tell me if I'm
wrong...
Media centre, TabletPc, Origami,
and now HomeServer...
Products for geeks, not real people.
The only time they make "better products"
are when they start copying:
XBox, Zune.
Wait...what about that NAS/Mediaserver???
The Home Freezer Windows Edition.
a) sync/links up with iTunes
b) streams live TV from server to iTunes/PC (like Sling) and iTV.
c) streams audio/video files to network devices like iTV, slimdevice and roku.
d) records multiple Tv shows as a network PVR
I had foreseen this years back
and am hoping for one by Apple,
(without the DRM ie. sigh..)
administrator?"
"Gates: No it's important to look hard at what the focus of that
device has been, which is the easy setup and no ongoing need to
worry about it at all."
LOL! Yeah, right. Microsoft is going to come up with a easy-to-
use, worry-free home server system. In your dreams, Bill. And
even there it's going to be easy-to-use and worry-free only after
version 1545.
- Home Server - Microsoft
- by prvpandey February 13, 2008 1:42 AM PST
- It is really hilarious moment that MS is trying to cover every sphere of Biz. I will suggest them first compete with Google on search engine sphere.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(55 Comments)Microsoft do not Copy Paste the Ideas of the startups & individuals. I guess there shouls be a law that companies will be fined for thwarting Innovation.
Praveen Pandey