As announced previously Todd Headrick the Product Manager of the Windows Home Server Team posted a question over on the WHS forums asking if you would like Power Pack 1 released prior to June 2008, the date when the Data Corruption fix is due.
More than 220 replies later and with Windows home Server MVP Ken Warren doing the maths there are (so far) 152 votes to ship Power Pack 1 as soon as reasonably possible and 11 votes to hold it for now. Everyone who weighed in on the side of “Hold” expressed a preference to devote all available resources to the KB946676 fix.
Of the “Ship” votes, not everyone expressed a reason (and some expressed more than one), but the reasons that were expressed were as follows:
Wants the Vista x64 connector: 71
Server backup to alleviate the KB946676 bug: 25
Server backup, other reasons: 12
Remote access improvements: 2
“Wake from sleep”: 1
Pending HP updates: 1
As we can see from these sums it’s pretty clear that the community is overwhelmingly in favor of getting PP1 out the door before KB946676 if it’s basically ready to go now.
Some users requested that only some components from PP1 were released, Todd replied with the following:
The various features and components of the Power Pack 1 release cannot be separated. A few things require other things to be updated so they work. For example, the Windows Home Server Connector for Windows Vista x64 requires updates to the Windows Home Server Console. And the package is tested as a whole, breaking out components would require a restart of a complete test pass.
Others requested the WHS Connector software for Windows XP x64 edition but which has always been the case the Windows Home Server Connector software will not work on home computers running Windows XP x64 edition. It is not tested and will not be supported.
Todd also mentioned that when Power Pack 1 is released, that it would go out via Windows Update during the end of the month. The earliest this could happen would be April as the check-in for March has long since passed. There are a tremendous number of steps/sign-offs that have to be got through as part of the release management process. The next step is for the feedback to be taken to the team and see what can happen and by when. There are many people that need to be consulted about the idea of releasing Power Pack 1 prior to the data corruption fix, but thanks to the feedback from the community Todd added I have data to support a potential new proposal.
