• Engadget gets an HP MediaSmart Server

    Posted on June 23, 2007 at 05:23 CDT by • Comment in the Forums

    The folks over at Engadget posted a brief description of a pre-production version of HP’s MediaSmart Server – the Windows Home Server machine that HP should have on store shelves in a few months.

    Although it’s a bit hard to understand what the reviewer wrote, this part’s intelligible: “…it was still a pre-production sample — so the drive sleds didn’t come out, nor did the plastics all stay fastened properly.”

    Click through on the photos and it’s pretty impressive – four front-mounted (and supposedly hot-swappable) hard drives in a tiny cage. Blue lights. One USB port in front, three in the back. Definitely something cool to stick in your closet…

    I wonder where they put the fans? WHS boxes are going to generate a LOT of heat, and this one doesn’t seem to have any channeled air flow routes: it’s all mesh.

    Based on the screen shot, it appears to hold 300 GB in hard drive space, which is mighty small. Looks like 111 GB X 2 plus a 75 GB drive. (Original rumors were 500 GB X 2 for a fairly basic, presumably $500 to $600, machine.) The folks at Engadget gussied up one shot by sticking a 300 GB external drive on the machine (you can’t see the drive itself in the photos)… but they forgot to install the drive – so the server can’t use it!

    One of the shots shows something that’ll be a BIG disappointment to most folks. WHS Remote Access lets you log on to your home network from anywhere in the world (with proper setup, passwords, etc), and once you’re logged on to the Windows Home server machine, you can proceed to log on to any computer on the network, controlling it as if you were sitting in front of it. One problem that’s in the fine print: you can only control computers running XP Pro, or Vista Business, Enterprise or Ultimate. Vista Home Premium machines don’t make the grade. Nor do XP Home computers.

    Interesting. One of the shots shows a shared folder on the server called TV Recordings. RC doesn’t have such a folder. I wonder if it’s an HP-only addition?

    Windows News
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