Microsoft Windows Home Server OEM

by Microsoft

Product Features

• Windows Home Server, OEM edition. Comes with 1 server license and 10 client licenses. English.

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000VWW8QQ
• Item model number: CCQ-00015
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 13, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,599 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #94 in Software > Operating Systems > Microsoft Windows

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Please Note: This OEM software is intended for system builders only and cannot be transferred to another PC once it is installed. The purchaser of this software is required to comply with the terms of the System Builder license, including the responsibility of providing all end-user support for the software.

It's time to brush the digital dust off your captured moments and media--for good. Introducing a simpler, smarter way for families to organize, share, and protect photos, videos, music, and much more. Windows Home Server brings it all together in a central hub, connecting your home PCs and making it easy to keep and enjoy your family's most important memories. Grandma will love it too.

Do you have multiple PCs with increasingly large amounts of digital photos, music, video, and documents? Is protecting, organizing, and connecting this digital media becoming a seemingly impossible task? The answer to your digital dilemmas has arrived.

Features:

• Your family's digital memories and media organized in one central hub
• Home PCs backed up daily, automatically
• Simple recovery of lost files or even entire PCs
• Complete access from networked PCs to all your Windows Home Server files
• A personalized Web address for sharing your photos and home videos
• Easy and quick setup
• Expandable storage space for future use
• Innovative third-party applications

Protect:

Restore files, folders, and entire computers easily
That video of your baby's first steps isn't gone forever. Windows Home Server can bring back individual files or folders for a computer in your home that has been backed up to your home server. You can even rescue a PC that's had an unfortunate accident, effectively turning back the clock and fully restoring the old system.

Secure your stuff with Automatic Backups
Imagine the peace of mind that comes from automatic daily backups. Windows Home Server helps keep your family's important files safe, backing up every computer in your home, every day. Your files and folders are automatically duplicated across multiple hard drives, so even if one fails, you can still recover what's important.

Keep your PCs running in tip-top shape
Your family's PCs stay healthy with home network health monitoring. You can see the exact condition of the computers in your home and make sure everyone's software and virus definitions are up-to-date.

Protect your files from prying eyes
Windows Home Server sits behind your firewall and has strong password controls to help secure your home network. You decide who sees what, so you can share what you want and keep the rest private.

Connect:

Easily share from anywhere
Use your free Internet address to share digital memories and more with anyone you want. All they'll need is Web access, a browser, and a log-in password from you. And don't worry about Mom getting a hold of the wrong pictures; you decide who gets to see what with a simple drag and drop.*

Connect to your home server from virtually anywhere
With Windows Home Server, home is just a click away. You can connect remotely to the computers in your home and access all your files, even run applications, just as if you were sitting in front of your home computer.**

Stream photos, music, and videos
Keep in tune with what your kids are listening to. Now the whole family can enjoy each other's music, from your wife's jazz standbys to your daughter's new favorite pop song. Use your Xbox 360 or other supported digital media receiver to listen to your family's shared music collection, watch a photo slideshow, or catch up on recorded TV shows and movies.

Organize:

Get to files easily
Stop the spread of digital clutter. When you store all your files together, you can get to them as quickly and easily as if they were on your PC's hard drive. Windows Home Server uses a familiar interface that integrates with all your home computers.

Keep it together
Stop wondering where last year's Christmas pictures ended up and put your family photos where you can all see them. Get and stay organized with a single, easy-to-access location for all your important files.

Share photos, music, and videos
Turn your home into a digital democracy. With Windows Home Server, everyone in your family can create and access shared folders of photos, music, and movies from any PC in your network. You can also share music through your Xbox 360 or digital music receiver.

Grow:

Add more space whenever you need it
Now you don't have to choose between your photo albums and music albums. You'll have all the space you need--simply connect a new hard drive to your Windows Home Server. Of course, all your family's videos, photos, and music are still safely stored together.

Do more with your home server now and in the future
Imagine controlling your home security system through Windows Home Server. Designed with new products and services like this in mind, Windows Home Server will keep growing and getting better. Software and hardware developers are already working on innovative add-ins, such as home webcams, family information management software, home automation, and other innovations that work with your home server.

*You may need to add services from your broadband provider to use Windows Home Server's remote access features.
**To connect to one of your home computers via Remote Access, your home computer needs to be properly configured and running one of the following operating systems:
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (SP2)
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Windows XP Tablet Edition with SP2
Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows Vista Business, or Windows Vista Enterprise

Product Description

Microsoft Windows Home Server

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great product. Minimal hassles., November 14, 2007

By 

Thomas Johnson (Redmond, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Home Server OEM (DVD-ROM)

What I did: got an OEM copy of the software (it's like XP Media Center - MS doesn't want to sell these without hardware) and bought a PC off of UBID - a refurbished unit with the specs to handle this OS. Because the experience is designed to be hassle-free out of the box, MS isn't encouraging do-it-yourselfers to get the product at retail. And yet, I wanted my own machine to save money and to play with the install to see how it went.

In a word, (almost) flawless. I got the ubid pc with windows home basic on it, and popped in the WHS DVD. It installed with minimal input from me, and booted right up.

There was one error message, because I was using a do-it-yourself machine, I needed to install the network drivers for my particular box. The error message and troubleshooting guide led me directly to the problem. Because this is Windows at its core, I went to the internet and downloaded an old XP driver for my network card, and it installed without a problem. I was a little bit worried that there would be a compatibility issue, but it has worked flawlessly since I installed the net driver.

Bottom line: this unit is great. It works completely as advertised, and I'm anxious to set this box up as an iTunes server, a media server for WMAs, a repository for recorded media center TV shows, and because this is a windows box at its core, it won't be long before someone ports a torrent client over to this box and has it trickling content 24-7.

The machine I used has 512k, a 1.7 amd chip, and a couple of hard drives. Any old tower case will have enough drive bays for expansion, and this one has plenty. I can fit 4 or 5 more drives in there as I need them, and the whole hardware setup cost about $340 for 650 gig of redundant storage.

Great work, Microsoft. Now get out there and tell people about this product.

43 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Connected Home Is Now A Reality, October 23, 2007

By 

Robert L. Stinnett (Boonville, MO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Home Server OEM (DVD-ROM)

Chances are in your house you have several computers, maybe a laptop or two and a desktop in the den or the your kids room. All these machines serve different functions -- one is for your business, one might be for storing digital pictures and the kids may use theirs for playing games. They are all different and even though they reside under the same roof it is next to impossible to share files with them all and when it comes to backup -- well, just ask yourself this, when is the last time you backed any of them up? You are a digital home but a connected home you are not.

Enter Microsoft's newest product, Windows Home Server. A revolutionary product that offers consumers centralized storage and backups in their households with a product that you plug in and literally let it run without any intervention on your part.

Windows Home Server makes the concept of a connected home a reality in a simple, easy to use package that will bring your entire digital family together in one place. Imagine never having to worry about backups again because they are taken automatically, every night, while you sleep. Think of how easy it would be to share digital pictures, movies and files with your family without having to e-mail them or put them on USB fobs that always seem to get lost. What if you could check to make sure your kids have their anti-virus protection running without having to check their computer manually? How about never having to worry about your precious family photos, home videos and important documents getting lost because of a computer crash thanks to data redundancy?

If these sound like your idea of a dream, then dream no more. All these features and more await you in Windows Home Server.

The idea is simple. Put a machine (doesn't have to be too powerful) in an out of the way location in the house. It doesn't need a keyboard or a mouse, just hard drives. But wait, even the hard drives don't have to be all the same or fit inside the box. You can hook up any combination of hard disks you want -- from internal to external USB and firewire drives. Windows Home Server manages them for you, creating one big pool of disk space that is duplicated across the drives -- so if one fails, you don't lose one byte of data!

Backups are a breeze as well; every night Windows Home Server backups up files from all the connected PC's and stores them on the server. However, it doesn't just back up files -- it intelligently decides which files are different, and which aren't and doesn't backup duplicates. So if everyone in your house has Microsoft Word installed, it won't create 5 backup copies of it. Just one copy which all 5 computers can restore from!

Traveling and need access to your Powerpoint presentation or important document? Fire up a web browser and securely access any file stored on the server! Better yet, remote connect to any computer in your household running Windows Vista or XP and use it as if you were sitting right in front of it. All from a secure web browser!

One more thing for all you XBOX 360 owners out there, or those of you who have digital picture frames that are network-aware -- Windows Home Server has the ability to stream content to your XBOX 360 and to your digital picture frames! Functionality "out of the box", which will no doubt be extended further as third party applications start to appear thanks to the Windows Home Server Software Development Kit (SDK) that Microsoft has released for WHS.

In Windows Home Server Microsoft has created a product (based off of Windows 2003 Server) that any household can use and enjoy without having to worrying about "IT Support". The product just simply works, and needs almost zero maintenance. Watch for vendors such as HP to come out with pre-configured "appliances" this fall such as the HP EX475 MediaSmart Home Server (AMD Live/ 64 Bit Sempron Processor, 1 TB Hard Drive) or use spare hardware you already have in your house to "roll your own" by purchasing this OEM software kit. Either way, your home will change forever and become not just a digital home, but a connected home where everyone can share data and have a safe, enjoyable experience using their machines.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome product!!!!!, October 24, 2007

By 

Stefan Steiner (WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Home Server OEM (DVD-ROM)

After installing Windows Home Server on an old PC and adding four 500GB drives for $400, I effectively have a full featured NAS* file server with the added benefit of it being my home based webserver running the Windows 2003 IIS. If you have an old PC, why spend hundreds more to buy one of the NAS* disk devices with practically no features other than serving up files. WHS also provides a good backup system too that lets you backup your home PCs with little management effort.

* Note: I mistakenly wrote SAN instead of NAS in the first version of this review as pointed out in the comments to this review. I hope all can rest easier now that this has been fixed :-)