Q&A: Windows Home Server Simplifies Digital Life for Families
Q&A:
Windows Home Server Simplifies Digital Life for Families | REDMOND,
Wash., Jan. 8, 2007 — During his keynote at the 2007 International Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates unveiled plans to
launch a new consumer product for families: Windows Home Server. Slated for
availability later this year with the HP MediaSmart Server, Windows Home Server
will allow families with multiple PCs to easily protect treasured images,
music, personal documents and videos; centrally store that content; and access
it from outside the home.
PressPass spoke with Steven VanRoekel, director of Microsoft’s
Windows Server Solutions Group, and Maureen Weber, general manager, HP
Personal Storage Business, to discuss how Windows Home Server and the HP
MediaSmart Server hardware will provide a unique set of benefits for digital
households.
PressPass: How will consumers benefit from Windows Home Server and
HP MediaSmart Server?
VanRoekel: The quantity of digital information that consumers have
today is increasing like never before. The prevalence of digital cameras,
digital video recorders, MP3 players and other devices is creating massive
quantities of information that is stored in these “islands” of data around the
home. Usually, the person who takes the picture, downloads the music, et
cetera, has that information stored on their PC, and if the hard drive fails or
something bad happens, that information is effectively lost.
Windows Home Server and the HP Media Smart Server will help families with
two or more PCs in the home connect those islands, providing a central place
where they can easily store, access and share that information.
Windows Home Server will also come with a set of shared folders that are
predefined for content such as photos, music, videos, et cetera – and customers
will also be able to create their own folders. So for example, a customer could
create a folder to which all tax documents would be backed up. They could then
securely access those folders from the desktop of any computer in the house.
Likewise, they could copy all their photos to the photo folder, all their
videos to the video folder.
And Windows Home Server will automatically protect those treasured images,
music, personal documents and videos by centrally backing up all the machines
in the house as well. For example, if a parent or sibling accidentally deletes
an important file or document, or a selection of photos of the newborn,
customers will be able to easily recover those materials by accessing the most
recent backed up file containing the original document or group of photos.
Weber: As Steven said, Windows Home Server connects data and digital
media collections so users can access them all from any computer in their
household. From a hardware perspective, the HP MediaSmart Server has elaborated
on that scenario with HP Photo Webshare, a feature that enables consumers to
securely share photos with friends and family directly from the server – and
friends and family can likewise share their photos on the same Webshare. Photo
Webshare also enables consumers to easily create separate albums so they can
control how broadly any group of images is shared. Music lovers will appreciate
the ability to centralize music from family members’ computers to the HP
MediaSmart Server, even preserving playlists. Now family members will be able
to access all the music from any computer in the house.
Not only does the MediaSmart Server provide greater convenience in
organizing and accessing information, it also provides increased peace of mind
by enabling users to back up all this information on a separate hard drive that
sits inside the server. This complements Windows Home Server’s ability to
automatically back up information. And because this drive is separate, it
increases the security of the information in the event of any sort of hardware
failure.
PressPass: What about accessing information remotely? Will Windows
Home Server provide the same ease of use as services that allow me to store
information on the Internet?
VanRoekel: Windows Home Server will enable customers to create a
secure Web site from which they can log on to their Home Server and access or
transfer information from any Internet-connected PC. For example, suppose
someone takes pictures of their kids while on vacation, and the chip in their
camera is getting full. They would then be able to pop the chip in to any
compatible computer, upload the photos to their Windows Home Server from the
road, make sure they're backed up, and then empty their camera and take more
pictures. Windows Home Server will also support the remote desktop features in
select versions of Windows Vista and Windows XP, so customers can access their
home PCs and applications as if they were actually sitting in front of them.
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