I have using Windows Home Server Beta 2 for the past few weeks now and its pretty leet. Microsoft has made a fairly easy yet powerful server OS that most users should be able to figure out. It took awhile to install ( over 2 hours ) but I blame that on the beta. Home Server makes it easy to share files over a network and to backup multiple computers. After installing and setting up the server, you run an app on each computer you want to connect to the server and it will take care of adding it to the server for you. It has an auto disk management that will take care of duplication ( software RAID ) and defrag. I can even have my 360 connect to it and get photos, music, and videos off the server. The only issues so far are you can’t add users with no passwords ( means I can’t add my parents comp ) and it has a few stability issues. I would love to see vidcast/podcast support ( I currently use Democracy Player to download vidcasts and then share them for my 360 ) built into the OS and some kind of media conversion. The screenshots below are from the console app which lets you remotely control the server.

Based off what I have seen so far, Windows Home Server is off to a good start and after some tweaking and maybe a couple new features and it will make for a nice OS.

Filed under: Tech, Beta, Reviews, Windows, Windows Home Server