For the love of Windows Home Server

johnbaxter The problem is likely that your profile has your local time set incorrectly. It doesn't change for DST so that's a probable cause.

Is WHS a necessary feature? Sell us on it, if its the greatest thing since sliced bread.

And, as a teaser, here are the first couple of paragraphs of Paul's review: ---------------------------------------- Every once in a while, a technology comes down the pike that renews my faith in what I've dedicated huge chunks of my personal and professional lives to. Windows Media Center is a terrific example of that, because it touches on virtually everything that's interesting about technology to me: It's innovative, it's beautiful, and it's just fun, and people "get" it, and want it, the second they see it. Products like Media Center are pretty rare, however, and while I recall eagerly awaiting the first Media Center beta to show up on my doorstop in early 2002, the years since have been comparatively disappointing. Even Windows Vista, originally so full of vigor and promise, eventually became far less exciting because of interminable delays and dropped features. So it's been awhile. This past year, however, my interest with technology has once again been tweaked, this time by Windows Home Server, a product that is, in many ways, related to Windows Media Center. That said, Windows Home Server (WHS) is quite a bit more pedestrian and workmanlike in the sense that you won't ever really sit in front of a WHS machine and "use" it as you do with Vista or Media Center. No, WHS is designed to sit quietly in a closet, or under a desk, doing its thing. But then it's that "thing" that is so exciting. And though it may be a tough sell for some people right now--WHS, like Media Center, is somewhat ahead of its time--I have no doubt that a huge percentage of Windows-using consumers around the world needs this product, whether they realize now it or not. Maybe when Apple copies it as Apple Home Server, or whatever, and supplies about 50 percent of the functionality three years down the road (you know, as they did to Media Center with Front Row and then Apple TV), people will finally get it. I don't think you should have to wait that long, however. WHS is here today, and it's a winner.

There's a lot of cool stuff going with Windows Home Server (WHS) lately. Especially now that PP1

Ocean If there's one thing I've learned to be true about WHS in the time since it entered beta it's this: Some people see it and fall in love with it as though a hole in their lives had suddenly been filled while other people look at it and can't figure out why they'd care in the least. In all that time, I have yet to figure out what puts a person in one camp or the other and it's rare that somebody is in between. It's not technical sophistication, it's not exposure to large or small networks, it's not a platform thing, it's not technophile vs technophobe. It's a real puzzle. (I'm in the best thing since sliced bread category and I can't explain why and I've tried)

Thank you, mikegalos. It was indeed my timezone setting. But--I had that on GMT-7, right for Pacific time during DST. The time on Paul's post corrected when I changed it to GMT-8. At least now it was posted before I read it.

>> I have two machines sitting here on my desktop. For the most part, they do different things, and need therefore to contain mostly different data. For the data which it is convenient to have synced, I do, via another couple of solutions.<< Bingo. Live Mesh is --awesome-- for this purpose.

Ocean, well home server is home server. It is not necessarily a syncing appliance, it's more of an aggregator, which is what it should be. My thought re: Outlook sync was kind of an afterthought - and a feature thoroughly lacking in MS realm. Curiously. Third party solutions that do it well are also hard to find. Anyway. But it's great because you don't need discrete solutions, and because it is an appliance-style gadget, and not a separate server box that requires complex set-up and maintenance. Bottom line is, if there is more than one PC in a household, chances are that a lot of data is replicated, and chances are that there's no good reason for that, and so there is probably a need for WHS, but people just don't realize it.

"If people don't realize it, MS needs to fire their marketing guru, no?" Probably, but think about how hard the concept of Tivo was for regular consumers to understand. It was the kind of product that you didn't "get" until you actually used it, otherwise it felt kind of needless. WHS is the same kind of product. Disclosure: I don't own either, but I "get" them and have considered them.

Ocean, No, not really. You see, MS is in a pickle here. (It's all my conjecture, by the way, so don't take this as official). They make the WHS product that can power appliances. Actually, marketing it to consumers (considering the most common denominator) is asking for trouble, as people would probably struggle to set it up correctly; not to mention, they need a spare box. Now, what HP did with MediaSmart server is nothing short of spectacular - it is everything a WHS box should be (well, minus 1.5 GB of RAM; I so don't want to void the warranty by messing with it). So it's up to the appliance manufacturers to do the marketing, which they have kind of been doing, but there's a lot of education that needs to take place, too. Which is always difficult. Waethorn, WHS is more than backup plus anytime / anywhere access to digital media. Although the latter part is kind of significant. But it can do remote access to your PCs, it can do media streaming (I stream my iTunes library finally, which avoids keeping several disjointed libraries on the individual PCs which is a PAIN to keep organized / synchronized). It can do the file repository (again, accessible anywhere) which I use for work, etc. It's like a server, with an additional web front end. Pretty cool.

Thx mike, but I knew that already. As far as the user is concerned though, they don't see that, except for the reliability and space savings. Also, Microsoft recommends against using RAID in WHS, just so you know. Does WHS support DLNA-compatible media streaming? DLNA uses technology that's part of UPnP, QoS media optimization, and Windows Media Connect. BTW: Care to take on this quandary? (see my comments at the end): http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/08/26/the-moja... "Say Hello to UnMac"

mike: UEFI support in Windows Vista SP1 is more complicated than just enabling "UEFI Boot" on an Intel-based board. For one, Intel boards don't come with any kind of EFI firmware code out of the box. Secondly, once you have an EFI firmware with a shell and compatible EFI driver packages for your hardware, you have to have the EFI Shell set as the primary boot device, before any drives. Lastly, you have to have EFI support of bootable optical discs so that the Vista SP1 DVD can boot (EFI shells that are configured properly and have the proper drivers for drive controllers and optical drives would support this as a sort-of Autoplay function). Otherwise, you'd have to launch the setup program manually by specifying it on the commandline. AFAIK, Intel doesn't have any prebuilt EFI firmwares that you can just load onto specific UEFI-supporting motherboards. The code samples that they provide also don't have drivers for all of the necessary hardware on those boards either (drive controllers, drives, etc.), so you're on your own. It's probably why EFI won't get off the ground any time soon.

Rick, Nice to see somebody from the neighborhood (relatively) on here. I was on Mercer Island on Tuesday.

Mike, yep - I am in Redmond's back yard...