David Flynn21 July 2007, 3:56 AM
Now that Microsoft's much-praised Windows Home Server has been RTM'd, how can you go about getting your own WHS-powered box? Or better yet, building you own? We've got the inside scoop!
It's been a busy week over at Building 42 on Microsoft's sprawling Redmond campus. That low-slung slab is home to the Windows Home Server team, which on Tuesday signed off on the first edition of this highly anticipated ‘server for the rest of us'.
APC has been running various builds of Windows Home Server for much of this year, and like the rest of the community, we're impressed - enough to have called it "one of Microsoft's most polished and most impressive 1.0 releases to date."
(Click here to read our walkthough of the Beta 2 build of Windows Home Server, along with oodles of screenshots. You can also download PDFs of Microsoft's official Getting Started Guide and Reviewer's Guide if you need something else to read besides the latest Harry Potter book).
"We're in process of delivering the final code to our OEM and software partners so they can continue building and finalize their products" Joel Sider, Senior Program Manager for Windows Home Server, told apcmag.com, so that the first wave of Windows Home Server systems will hit the US market around October-November. Microsoft has so far signed up six hardware partners to build Windows Home Server boxes: HP, Gateway, LaCie, Iomega, Fujitsu-Siemens and Medion (and we've still got our fingers crossed that Acer and particularly Dell will join the troupe). HP will likely be first out of the gate with its bookend-sized MediaSmart, which can house up to four front-loaded SATA drives (with USB interconnects for four more external drives, although these can also be used for sharing devices such as a printer).
 HP's MediaSmart: this pint-sized 'poster child' for Windows Home Server will start at around US$599 |
A HP spokesperson estimated that pricing will start at US$599 (which probably means around the AUD$800 - $900 mark). The hard disk capacity for the base model hasn't been revealed. The system will be powered by AMD's 64-bit 1.8GHz Sempron 3400+ ‘Manila' processor with 512MB of RAM, which our tests indicate is ample for basic use but will probably want a boost to1GB once you start loading up third-party Windows Home Server software and add-ins, of which there's plenty about and more to come.
A list of current add-ins is here: Sider told apcmag.com that his favourite is Lobster Tunes, which streams music from a Windows Home Server media library directly to a Windows Mobile smartphone via 3G or Wi-Fi.
 Self-service: the uTorrent add-in lets your server into a 24/7 BitTorrent machine and share the downloads with everyone on your home network |
 By the book: a Dummie's guide to Microsoft's very own "server for dummies"! |
Our pick of the bunch is the server-resident µTorrent client (a shame to let that always-on broadband connection and empty disk space go to waste!) closely followed by Photosync, which automatically copies snaps from the server's Photos folder onto your Flickr page. The marketing machine is also gearing up with the release of
Windows Home Server for Dummies - and no, we're
not kidding!
Buying a ready-made server is fine for the masses, and that's very much where Windows Home Server wants to be. As Sider says, "Our target market is any home with broadband and more than one PC!". But for many of us, the fun is in building our own server - either by resurrecting an old desktop which is past its use-by-date as an everyday system but still meets the relatively modest requirements of Windows Home Server (at least a 1GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM), or building a bespoke system from the ground up.
What are our options? While the OS itself won't be directly available to consumers as boxed software a la Windows Vista, "it will be available to system builders" Sider says. Unlike retail brand names such as HP who "target broader consumer audiences", Sider explains that system builders "tend to build and sell more targeted, lower volume solutions, perhaps for specific markets." It's system builders who provide many enthusiasts with a back door to obtaining OEM-only operating systems, as was the case with the Media centre Edition of Windows XP - by buying a singe piece of relevant hardware to build the system, one could often get the OS included. The products were typically hard drives or motherboards but some stores have been happy to bundle the OS with something as modest as a mouse.
"Enthusiasts and hobbyists have been known to acquire system builder versions of Media Centre and other products through this channel in conjunction with a purchase of various types of hardware" Sider admits. When apcmag.com asked "will users be able to buy a single hardware component (like a hard drive or case) and get the WHS on disc, as was the case with OEM editions of Windows XP?", Sider has a coy smile. "As I describe above, the scenario you outline is possible and could very well happen."