Windows Home Server off to production, gets new partners
July 16, 2007 9:01 AM PDT
By Rich Brown

Right on schedule, Microsoft announced that its Windows Home Server software is off to the presses. This clears the way for HP, Gateway, LaCie, Medion, and now Iomega and Fujitsu Siemens, (both also announced today, the latter in Europe only) to begin selling their Home Server-powered hardware later this quarter.

If you're unfamiliar, Windows Home Server is Microsoft's attempt to solve the growing problem of fragmented media collections. Through an easy-to-use interface, you can organize and manage access to your media files (or any other kind of data) from one centralized location, rather than having to look through multiple PCs for your various photos, music files, and videos.

Windows Home Server even has a Web-based client that will give you full read and write capability from any PC connected to the Internet. Under Microsoft's current plan, it won't be selling Windows Home Server as a standalone software product. Instead, you need to purchase a full-blown server from one of Microsoft's previously mentioned hardware partners.

The good news is that the hardware requirements for Windows Home Server are relatively modest. All you really need is a hard drive and the basic guts of a PC. The servers don't even need mice or keyboards. Unless you really load up on hard drive storage, we don't expect prices of the Home Server-equipped hardware to jump beyond that of a basic home desktop.

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IMHO it isn't ready yet.

Still some bugs to be fixed
I wonder what the big rush is

The one i submitted yesterday may not be a show stopper, but really needs to be fixed... it is still active.

Gosh this is sooner than expected

I just read that the final fixes...

Quote:

There were over 100 fixes. A lot of them were text string changes for localization builds (German, French and Spanish). The major ones reported here: Backup Consistency Check, Log files growing, Windows Updates takes all updates (including non-critical ones), Remove Drive problems, Activation error messages have been fixed. There was also a little bit of work done on Server Recovery for some of our hardware partners. We will not be providing a detailed list of all of the bugs reported and status of those bugs.

It's going to be quite interesting to see where we can buy this thing once it's available...

oh and there's always Windows Update and then SP1 for more fixes I guess

No Standalone?!?! I have a Dual Pentium III 1.0GHz that I thought about putting this on. Oh well, I guess that solves my problem.

mnemonicj wrote:

No Standalone?!?! I have a Dual Pentium III 1.0GHz that I thought about putting this on. Oh well, I guess that solves my problem.

Actually it should work very well on that system mnemonicj

Quote:

<snip> This has been an exciting and rewarding journey for me and the team.† For me it's been a labor of love for over 8 years. The “Quattro” project began in February 2004 and we became a product group in April 2005. As you can imagine, I am extremely gratified that we have built a great V1 product on time and on budget. <snip> -Charlie Kindel, GM, Windows Home Server

I am looking forward to buying a copy, hopefully it'll be under $100.00 US

Oh ya...Bring on the V2 testing

I'm guessing it will be in the $300 to $400 range...more or less in line with the cost of Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate

Although, if it's OEM (which it probably is), then it could well be at a better (lower) price

Quote:

Under Microsoft's current plan, it won't be selling Windows Home Server as a standalone software product. Instead, you need to purchase a full-blown server from one of Microsoft's previously mentioned hardware partners.