Up until now, one of the main drawbacks to the upcoming Windows Home Server was that the product was only going to be available on select, prebuilt systems from Integrated System Vendors (ISVs). Microsoft has apparently changed its mind on this score—one of the major announcements in Gates' keynote address at WINHEC today is the news that WHS will be directly available as an OEM product.
"Digital devices and digital media are now an essential part of so many aspects of our lives, and their importance continues to grow," said Microsoft chairman Bill Gates at WINHEC. "With Windows Home Server, we're launching a new category of consumer products that will make it much easier for people to connect to their digital content and share experiences with friends and family no matter where they are."
This is a move that makes a lot of sense for Microsoft's target market, as it's much more cost-effective to reposition an older or secondary system as a home server than it is to justify purchasing an entirely new system specifically for that purpose—especially when you have to justify the additional cost to a spouse. Buyers looking for a specifically-purposed home server system, however, will still have a range of options including HP's MediaSmart Server or the upcoming Medion Home Server, with the latter available in 500GB to 2TB storage flavors.
As we have already detailed, Home Server is designed to be a headless server package, with system administration handled via client tools or a web browser. Hooking additional storage to a typical Home Server system should be as simple as plugging in external drives, and the entire system is supposed to be fully compatible with Mac OS X and Linux systems.
Based on our own internal tests thus far, it's quite a useful and exciting piece of software. Those of you interested in testing WHS yourself should head over to Microsoft's page and register to be notified when the RC1 candidate becomes available.
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