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TechReviewSource.com - Your One-Stop Source for Technology Reviews - Windows Home Server

Windows Home Server is just one of the many operating system products that Microsoft has been working on for the past few years and now they have released a public beta to try out before it makes its retail release this fall. It is meant to be installed on an old PC and is designed to run "headless" (without a mouse, keyboard, or monitor). It is basically a home server that automatically backs up your home networks' computers and allows you to store your digital media and files on the server to access them from a centralized location on your network.

Windows Home Server (WHS) is actually built off of Windows Server 2003's codebase, so you know that it's a really solid operating system and has lots of administrative features for networks. What Microsoft has done is made it so you don't have to ever touch the server computer after you install the OS because you administer the server from the Windows Home Server Client Console from a client PC connected to the network. From there you do everything from create user accounts, manage the servers's storage, and use WHS add-ins. The console's interface is really sleek and easy to use.

For those of us that likes to blow through reading, this is not the successor to Windows NT/2000/Server 2003. Consider it a stripped down Windows Server 2003 with Vista visual style, used solely to backing up your machines on the network. Hopefully they can keep the price close to $100, this could be very useful installed on an older machine that you don't use anymore.