Home Server Partners Added

Windows Home Server, a forthcoming software platform for backing up data on networked home computers, has garnered some new partners and will be made available to system builders. The news was revealed at Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in May 2007, where Home Server was featured in Chairman Bill Gates’s keynote address. The price and release date were not announced.

Hardware and Application Support

Announced at the Jan. 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Home Server will give consumers an easy way to back up their existing computers and store files-particularly digital audio and video-in a centrally accessible place. It will be sold only in conjunction with inexpensive “headless” servers lacking a monitor or keyboard and will provide automatic backup of Windows PCs, manual backup of computers running Mac OS X or Linux, shared access to digital media and other files, monitoring of networked PCs for problems such as lack of security software, and remote Web-based access to data stored on the Home Server. Although based on Windows Server 2003, it will be much simpler and will lack many traditional server functions-for example, it will not be able to serve as a domain controller or firewall and won’t run applications such as Exchange.