Windows Home Server Beta 2

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.

Auto Install ALL 2000/XP/2003 Windows Updates from CD

How many times have you had to reinstall a someones Windows OS onsite? How many times has that person only had a 56k modem to download the Windows updates?. If you answer is more than once then this free tool is for you.

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Bill Gates: Vista is so secure it could run life support systems.

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Windows Home Server: details and features

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Screenshots of Vista from 2002 to Today

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Windows Home Server announced at CES (hardware+software combo)

It lives in your closet, is completely remotely managed, backs up your stuff, stores your videos, music, photos and makes your data available to you everywhere. Plug in additional hard drives into it, it redistributes the data onto the other drives.

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