Windows Home Server really available, sort of
Bill Gates announced Windows Home Server to much fanfare at January's Consumer Electronics Show.
The energy seems to have dwindled some during the product's elongated path to market over the past year. Microsoft finalized the code back in July, but HP said it would wait for an update to the software before releasing its MediaSmart server, in what was seen as the biggest endorsement of the product.
On Monday, Microsoft announced "general availability" for the software, although HP's product will not be shipping to consumers until later this month. Some servers from smaller computer makers have been available for a short while, though it's not totally clear what marks today as the day for general availability.
Medion and Fujistu Siemens still plan releases in Europe later this year, while Iomega's product is not aimed for arrival until next year.
Even when HP does start shipping its MediaSmart server in the next few weeks, the product is not expected to be a staple on store shelves. CompUSA is planning to sell it in some stores, while Circuit City and Best Buy are only committing to online availability for now, according to Microsoft. Other online retailers, such as Buy.com and Amazon.com, are also expected to sell HP's server, while Microsoft is holding out hope that retail availability will improve later in the year.
Amazon has started taking preorders for HP's server, which as of mid-morning Monday had climbed to the top of Amazon's best-seller list in the computer category.
The idea of a simple server to serve as a repository for media such as photos, music, and video holds some appeal, but it is something most consumers are going to have to learn more about and see and touch before being sold on the idea. That's going to be tough to accomplish with limited marketing and limited retail presence.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
Another sticky hitch to this... A computer running XP home will not join a domain environment. I could see some small businesses that could find this useful, but for the home where most people are running the home edition? I just don't see how it would be feasible.
click on "see what the excitement is about" for some features.
...and learn about the product you're commenting on.
be, my guess is it won't last long.
Understand where DRM resides... IT IS PART OF THE DIGITAL MEDIA, NOT THE OPERATING SYSTEM.
Microsoft, apple and linux operating systems support the use of DRM media by being able to read the certificates imbedded in the media and verifying the validity of that certificate.
Have you ever been to a secure website? Have you ever downloaded from itunes? Yes, these are all DRM MEDIA. They are based on certificates. You must provide the counterpart to the SSL certificate in order to view secure websites. Windows, linux, and mac os's today come preloaded with the matching half certificates of over 2 dozen public certificate authorities... verisign, godaddy, thawte.... You never knew that websites that use SSL require a certificate to do so? Yes, they do. The webserver (where the media is stored) has the certificate. Why won't a regular mp3 player not play a song from itunes? Because it doesn't have the software capable of reading the imbedded certificate in downloaded itunes songs. Apple will not release that, nor the encryption method used in the certificate.
You don't like DRM? Fine, neither do I. Just understand where it truely resides. Operating systems are not loaded with DRM, they only have software which will support using media that has DRM imbedded in it.
this job just fine and does not require hardly any setup and
configuration. Hardly anything new and a little disappointing that
the article did not even mention this (as well as other alternatives)
that have been around and are proven. Just another Zune.
Wow. I had no idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/Windows-Home-Server-the-Ars-Technica-review.ars
Unfortunately, when you have a terabyte or two on the server, and virtually nothing on the clients - what good is it to be able to back up the clients when the server is not backed up and has become a majorly important "single point of failure" in the home? It's bad enough if you lose, say, photos on one machine, but to lose all the photos for everybody seems pretty Microsoftian - making failure even more catastrophic than it used to be. ;)
It's only a great solution when all the data is checksummed on disk, on redundant disks and further backed up to another device. Until then it's nice, but dangerous.
Adding new disks into the storage pool is dead easy as well if you suddenly need to add more space.
WHS is quite a neat product in this respect.
Regards,
PP
http://www.999reasons.com/content/view/116/65/
Network storage, either automoated or manually, COPIES files. WHS looks at files, and does copy them, but if the same version of that file (down to the checksum) is on each of your computers, it only saves it ONCE. So my entire 3GB photos archive, my 8.9GB of video production files, which are on all three of my machines, it would only take those IDENTICAL files once. Now, some computer have some diffrent diffrent file version (say a jpg that is an origional, and one I shrank), it knows that although they are the same file name, same take time, the file size is diffrent, and therefore two seperate files to backup.
Network copying would OVERWRITE those files if they are in the same folder.
Performance; very noticeably slower compared to a Linux server on the same box.
DRM from MS; 'nuff said.
It isn't totally worthless, but I'm guessing that the cost of it will be more than the $12.50 I would pay.
You know what? We don't care. You can do this with XP, Windows 2000, and probably Windows 98, if you cared to bother. That's not the point. The point is a single product offering that is *intended* as a media/backup hub for the home. Can this be achieved in other ways? Yup. You betcha. But most folks aren't doing it, and if they are they're typically more "tech savvy" than the average household and aren't necessarily the candidates for this product. It's a "niche" product, folks, and contrary to POPULAR C-NET FANBASE OPINION, they're aren't a lot of products in this niche. Microsoft didn't invent the wheel with WHS, but it serves a purpose and consolidate existing functionality into a new package for consumers.
And guess what.... Apple didn't invent the wheel either.
<enter more Apple fanboys>
The discussions rarely have anything to do with the actual subject.
even more expensive gear?
How do you justify it?
Most households have perhaps a laptop and a PC at the most...
nothing that a fat USB HDD or two can't handle.
If you have more than three computers in one house, odds are
very good that you're going to be familiar with it enough to go
digging for a solution of your own.
[i]"It's a "niche" product, folks, and contrary to POPULAR C-NET
FANBASE OPINION, they're aren't a lot of products in this
niche."[/i]
On the media side, there's XP MCE, Vista MCE, AppleTV... two of
those are MSFT's own products.
OSX already has easy-to-use facilities for doing all of the things
this Windows Home Server thingy purports to do.
Hell, XP already has these... and it doesn't take any real acumen
to use it.
Oh, and the point you've been missing? MSFT nor Apple invented
the wheel - UNIX did that ;)
/P
QNAP TS-209 Pro Turbo Station, a 2-bay, hot-swappable All-
in-one NAS (Network Attached Storage) Server supporting up to
2TB storage capacity with server functions and RAID 1. It can
share files across Windows, Mac, Linux and UNIX. These little
boxes can blow away anything MS and Dell can come up with
AND at a lower price..!!
Features include:
500MHz CPU
128MB DDR II RAM
Gigabit Ethernet
File Server
FTP Server
Backup Server
Remote Replication
Web Server
MySQL Server
Printer Server
UPnP Media Server (with built-in TwonkyMedia Server)
Photo Sharing
Download Station
iTunes Server
One touch USB auto copy
Network Recycle Bin
Built-in DDNS support
PS3 and Xbox 360 compatible
- yaaawn
- by The_Decider November 6, 2007 11:17 PM PST
- Another bug ridden, DRM infested "me too" product from MS.
- Reply to this comment
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(59 Comments)It is still putting all your eggs in one basket which seems to be the goal of MS. From entripre level apps like AD down to this pile of rat excrement.