Microsoft nears Home Server release

Microsoft's Home Server software is one step closer to reality.

The software maker on Tuesday released a near-final "release candidate" version of Windows Home Server, a custom version of its Windows Server 2003 operating system. A final version is expected to come out later this year. Microsoft is pitching the software as an option for multi-PC households to manage burgeoning collections of media files.

Chairman Bill Gates announced plans for the product at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, saying that HP would build a product based on the software. At last month's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), Microsoft announced additional partners, including Gateway and Medion.

Microsoft said that those interested in testing the new software can register on Microsoft's Web site. More than 100,000 people have already been testing earlier versions of the software.

[JPRam]

1 of the 100,000

This is a great product! Always skeptical of a v1 from MS, but I got tired of toasters that didn't really work well, were slow as hell, and had limited capacity, so I repurposed a box that could run this (essentially Windows 2003 Small Business Server)
This thing will scale and the management of it is easy. You can go buy one of the headless devices when the OEM's start selling them, but you can easily install this on a barebones box. Hopefully, MS will make the OS available to those that want to take this route.
I only have about 1 TB, but I've seen comments from people that have 15 TB with a chain of hard drives.
Needs work to integrate with Media Player and Media Center, but it's a great start and already makes my life easier.

[Penguinisto]

Been there, done that...

...and I could've use a GUI to do it all, too - without paying a
dime for the OS or any of the professional-grade services that
came with it.

So Windows finally is playing catch-up to Linux. How...quaint.

/P

[Lindy01]

Have you tried it yet?

It is a pretty slick package, dont have to add anything but disk product. Especially if you have home network that has a Xbox 360 on it.

[rcrusoe]

Total waste of time and money

IMO, the only people who need a "home server" are people who already have the skills to manage a "YAUMP"* - but don't have the skills, or good sense to use Linux, etc.

Most people with home networks that need shared storage would be better served hanging a USB drive from their router. Apple, Linksys, & others offer this option and it only takes a couple of clicks to set up.

And a router/usb drive NAS has the added advantage of not needing to be patched for vulnerabilities every few days.


* Yet Another Unneeded Microsoft Product

[Penguinisto]

'zackly.

Not to mention the loss of freedom (hello? DRM?)

I have a file server - everything maps right to it, and backups
dump to it. It can happily serve Mac, 'doze, BSD, and Linux
clients. Best part is, the only real cost was in the three hard
drives that I latched onto an old Celeron box, a gigabit NIC, and
a gigabit hub/switch thingy to tie it all together. The last two
items were mere personal choice, so that the media box (latched
onto the TV) didn't have to store everything locally.

/P

[afolgueira]

First you don't know what you are talking about

Wow please tell one about one unneeded product by MS just name one???? first not many people have routers with USBs, second thats not secured at all, anybody can get into that network and get info from you, a server will make more secured, and please Macs ara not that secured ok, what happens is thtat since they only hold like 10% of the pc marketshare bad people dont care about them, look at safari for windows it has like 20,000 holes in it. and dont get me wrong I'm going to get a mac soon.