You should have stopped when you said "I never really saw the point of Microsofts Windows Home Server (WHS).". You obviously never used it. There may be cheaper backup appliances but easier I would have to argue with. It cannot be much easier to have it done automatically by simply installing a connection client and if you ever need to recover anything it is as easy as pie. or heaven forbid if you have to completely restore your computer. Boot from recovery disc and a couple clicks and walla.
While I think the dropping of this feature is a bad move, I do not think it will cripple the product. Large Hard drives of 1TB+ are affordable and to be honest I wouldn't mind having a smaller drive or partition for the OS and then a large RAID or seperate hard drives for the media. Once you set up the media shares it is seamless anyway. I find that WHS is one of the best solutions for a home or small business looking to set up a server that can do many things like being a Media Server, Central Storage, Backup for up to 10 computers and I am sure other things. I do not have a WHS currently but I have 3 friends that do and from what I have seen it is well worth the $99 and maybe modest computer with plenty of storage. Is it for everybody, heck no, but it is not a bad solution to consider.
I do appreciate the information as I will take the time to provide feedback to Microsoft to let them know my opinion of them dropping this feature. I do not see why they cannot just make it so there is an option on how you want to set up the WHS.
I am looking forward to the release of WHS "Vail" or whatever they will call it. I have a processor, motherboard, power supply, 4GB ram and a case already for it. Just waiting for WHS2 and will get the hard drives then. The HW set up so far cost me less than $400 and the rest will depend on the size of the drives I purchase.
The best of ZDNet, delivered
ZDNet Newsletters
Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox
