Coming Soon: Microsoft Home Server

Microsoft has decided to pair their new software MS Home Server with Hewlett-Packard. According to sources, the new MS Home Server will make its debut sometime in the second half of 2007. Recently Bill Gates had made the announcement during a presentation he was giving at CES in Las Vegas. Apparently what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas. He wanted to point out that the Home Server software would be for people that are using multiple computers or even X-Boxes and are in desperate need of having even more storage available.

So where does HP fit into this scenario? Microsoft paired up with HP and they will be release what they are calling the HP MediaSmart Server. The new HP server will have a 1.8GHz 64-Bit AMD processor, a whopping 4 hard drive bays as well as 4 USB ports. The tower that will hold all of this will be 10in high, 5.5in wide, and 9in deep. If you fill all 4 drive bays with 750GB hard drives and use all 4 USB ports to connect to external drives of the similar size, the HP server could run a total of 6 terabytes. The price on how much the new hardware will cost is still up in the air or they just don't want us to know yet. Currently for 300GB you would pay $380 or 500 GB for $550 via HP. Microsoft also seemed to make it easier for expansion, meaning that if you have an empty bay you can push in a new drive while the server is actually on.

The good news about MS Home Server is the fact that it is to be based off of MS Server 2003 code instead of Longhorn. Now for the bad news: the software will not be openly sold to the public (or end users in tech terms). It will only be supplied to the companies that build and make the hardware. So if you got the brilliant idea of buying the software and not having to shell out money to HP, think again. They will however sell the client software for XP, Media Center, and Vista. It seems that right now they are in the midst of Beta testing and are hoping to roll out the new software around back-to-school time.
So what will the software be able to do? According to Gregg Keizer of Information Week, "The software will perform automated backups of all systems connected to the network, let users restore damaged PCs from the central storage device, provide remote access via a personalized (and free) Windows Live Internet address, and stream digital content to Xbox 360 game consoles or others Windows Media Connect-supported hardware." He also went on to say, "Non-Windows systems -- such as machines running Mac OS X or Linux -- will see the Home Server as a file server, and be able to access data on it via Windows' SMB (Server Message Block) file sharing protocol." So basically, it will backup and restore damage for you, and if you don't like the idea of MS software and have Linux it will still be seen as a file server. Pretty convenient for those that are not very tech savvy.

So we shall see just how easy it is for the end user to use the new MS Home Server. We can hope that it would be "so easy even a caveman could do it", but be aware that programmers sometimes tend to make things harder than they should. They show a pretty good demonstration on the Microsoft blog site, of how easy it's supposed to be for the average user. Maybe Microsoft is on to something here and they can begin to bring people back to Windows. At any rate, it's a long wait until Fall 2007 so who knows what will be changed or added by that time.

Sources:

-InfoWeek website; http://www.informationweek.com/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196802015 , 2007 January 8, article by Gregg Keizer.

-Microsoft at CES website; http://microsoftatces.com/Default.aspx , 2007 January 8.

-Geico; Geico Caveman commercials, "So easy even a caveman could do it", 2007 January 8.