Neowin.net

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131540 £100.42 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct....=20&subcat= £93.99 inc VAT

Woah! i'm actually surprised, nice find aswell!

That's a good price for the UK. I'm not convinced about the product yet, though - I'll have to read up more about it.

I ordered mine from Novatech - only £86.95 inc VAT and free delivery.

You do realize that most of the Home Servers that are being offered are "headless" PCs that run on minimal power and "green" specs. Same can't be said for homebrew systems, but I (for one) built mine with my energy bill in mind.

Indeed. Anyone running a WHS with 8800 Ultras in SLI should be slapped with a wet trout...

I have a similar concern about servers. Is a server in the home really necessary anyway?

If you've got more than one PC, and you've ever been unfortunate enough to be hit by massive data loss, I think you'll find the answer is yes.

It saved my butt when my HD crashed the other day. I was up and running in hour from restoring from WSH

Hmm, I still don't really get it... Why would you need a server to take more or less regular backups? Just decide that Computer X can act as a store for your family documents, photos and music, and then back up that one every now and then? And let that computer double as a regular computer and "server". I mean, how many hosts in a home are we talking of here? 5? 10? It's rare to have more than around three where I live at least, and then the backup "issue" isn't much of an issue at all. Sure, making a dedicated file server out of performance reasons is one thing, but modern hardware isn't bad enough to not handle the "load" (if it can even be called server load) from a household.

Besides this, everything under at least the "Protect" and "Organize" headings above can also be done with Windows XP/Vista Home, and those are also aimed in features and user interface for home use. Actually, family members could first access family photos, music, and documents from a centralized location in Windows starting with Windows For Workgroups 3.11, and I bet Microsoft ran the exact same advertisement then about the revolution in your household. :-S

Well this can take the backups as often as you like, so basically nightly. Even frequent backups won't give you the same level of "roll back ability" as having incremental backups to a server. Add to that that it's an incremental backup so each backup is alot shorter and duesnt either require getting additional external HD's or even worse, half a dozen DVD's.

The backup isn't just family documents like pics and videos, it can be crucial data where you'd prefer a nightly backup as opposed to a weekly (or worse) one.

As for serve and share...yes any pc can do it but think of this as a central repository. As already mentioned you'd assume your server would be using a very low power pull. The same cannot be said about your gaming PC ect. If energy is a concern then surely your better of having the gaming PC off if all it's on for is to stream a video. Stream it from a lower power system. Besides not all PC's will act as a Media Extender which is an extra bit of media functionality I believe this incorporates which is useful for say 360 owners and the like.

I think you are forgetting that most PC users have no clue how to set that up and keep it running hassle-free...that is the point of WHS, it is a hassle free (config and forget) server. Once you have it setup the way you want it, it runs in the background and the only time you interact with it is when a) you want to tinker with it and b) if it is having a problem that it needs your feedback on.
I am quite capable of setting up the type of file sharing system you say, but it is tough to do on XP or Vista Home...WHS works seemlessly.
Simply put, this is by far the best home product MS has released in years. I was very skeptical myself until I tried it out and discovered everything that it could do with very little administration on my end.

All my power comes from a hydroelectric plant...so no guilt here. Either way, I use Vista Premium as my MCE OS and it does everything I want in a home server.

They've pulled it apparently. That link gives an "item not found" error and I didn't see it on the site.