As you may be aware, discussions were underway between the the Product Group and the Subscriptions Teams regarding making Windows Home Server available to MSDN subscribers and at the time it looked promising. But unfortunately the bad news is that it will not be available as a MSDN Subscriber Download at this time but then again it might be added in the future.
The Knowledge Base article from Microsoft documenting the data corruption issue has been updated. Updated on January 11th and now at revision 3.0 the latest info published is that the WHS team have now reproduced the issue which is extremely good news as now it will be easier for a fix to be worked on, which is currently taking place. Hopefully the next weeks will bring a resolution to this issue and I’m so glad that Microsoft are being so open about this issue and documenting the steps they are taking to resolve it.
This that time again. The week in review – Sunday’s summery for the week gone by.
The OWL-PCCHS is a new Windows Home Server case from Owltech which can take 4 hard drives and a Mini-ITX motherboard. But it looks exactly the same as the ES34069 chassis from Chenbro which we looked at here. Perhaps they are the manufacturer of the case? More info and pics. […]
Windows Home Server Power Pack Announced Courtesy of enthusiast site Channel 10 is a video with Todd Headrick from the Home Server team explaining some details on Power Pack 1.
Over on the eWEEK Microsoft Watch blog, author Joe Wilcox has been chatting to Brian Burch, Hewlett-Packard’s marketing director for the Managed Home Business Personal Systems group at CES 2008 about the company’s Windows Home Server system the MediaSmart Server. Brian said:
“Sales are so brisk, they’re too good. HP sold its planned three months of inventory in the first three weeks.”
The full story is here (at the bottom).
WebGuide for WHS is out as a free add-in that enables you to remotely access, listen, watch and stream your music, photos and videos stored on your home server while away from home. It Integrates with the Windows Home Server remote web site via the homepage link and a single-signon and enables you to access your photos with thumbnails, with “zoom” and exif-data. You can browse your music library and listen to it via the web and stream your videos/movies at multiple resolutions and bitrates. And if that is not enough you can also have mobile access to your music and videos from Windows Mobile devices as well.
This latest release 4.110 for WHS (1/7/2008) includes the following additions:
PCMAG.COM have a detailed review on the HP MediaSmart Server EX470. The 4 page review concludes by stating the following:
Overall, the MediaSmart sets the current standard for home NAS servers: It’s the new Editors’ Choice in this class. Fast performance on Gigabit Ethernet networks coupled with a nice price and Windows Home Server ease of use make this a package most home networks will enjoy.
Read it here.
The OWL-PCCHS is a new Windows Home Server case from Owltech which can take 4 hard drives and a Mini-ITX motherboard. But it looks exactly the same as the ES34069 chassis from Chenbro which we looked at here. Perhaps they are the manufacturer of the case?
More info and pics.
I was woefully aware that I needed an anti-virus solution for my Windows Home Server – I’d had it up and running for 3 months and it had zero protection. I’ve been a fan (if you can call it that) of CA’s Anti-Virus for years. However, with the installation of Windows Home Server I began to look for something that could not only protect WHS, but would also be centralized. Maybe it’s the IT guy in me, but I hate having a home network and still having to go around to every computer in our house and fool with it to update the virus software, update patches, install new programs, etc. This technology has been around for over a decade for PC’s, and isn’t that what WHS was supposed to help us do – centralize our home networks?
One day I decided to go looking for a better solution, and came across avast! Professional Family Pack. I think they must have heard me moaning and groaning because it was like they read my mind.
To start out with, avast! integrates directly into your WHS console, which is a big plus. I like to keep everything inside the console like Microsoft designed it to be. You can not only see the WHS anti-virus information, but you can also see information about all the computers in your home network and what version of avast! they are running, if any.
One cool thing I liked about the console integration is that it shows me what version of avast! is running on each PC, as well as the virus database version. Since I have a teenager in my household who likes to go downloading anything and everything, it is important that I know all the PC’s are up-to-date and one isn’t lagging behind. In addition, you can also see the license expire data of all the copies of avast! inside your network – really nice from the admin point of view.
Had avast! stopped there with the features, I would have been happy. However, we’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg. Not only can you see the computers in your network running avast! along with some critical information about them, but you can also control some aspects of the virus scanning right from the WHS console! Centralized control – now I was definitely sold!
Simply right click on any computer and you are presented with a menu of choices, including viewing the properties. You can change the scheduled scans on any computer in the network and have it overwrite local settings – nice for households, like mine, with kids/teenagers in them! You can also control what you want avast! to do when it finds an infected file, as well as how sensitive the scan should be.
Over on the notifications tab you can also control what type of notifications that particular PC will send to the WHS network (through the pop-ups on the clients and the status screen on the console). As you would expect, you can tell it to alert you when a virus is found, but you can also tell you to notify WHS when the license has expired, an update failed or protection turned off.
I particularly like the last one – protection turned off – because sometimes viruses or trojans can sneak onto your computer and disable the virus protection as they do their dirty work.
So what do you do if you are 200 miles away and your significant other calls us and tells you he/she thinks there might be a virus on their PC? Simply right click and force a scan on that particular PC. Another great feature of avast! and another reason for centralized control of anti-virus software in your home network. The only downsize to this is the local PC can cancel the scan. I’d love to see future versions come with the ability for the home network guru to be able to password protect avast! and prevent people on the network from stopping scans or exiting avast! altogether.
Much like WHS does, avast! also keeps you up to date on what is going on. Here, a notification was sent to a computer on our home network to do an on-demand scan and the user who was logged it was notified that the scan had started. I would like to see the last sentence removed though until they implement the ability to not allow local users to cancel scans when initiated from the WHS console.
Now here is where a good anti-virus solution turns into a great anti-virus solution for your home network – the price. Avast! sells a professional family pack that includes one license for WHS and 10 licenses for client PC’s on your network (the maximum WHS supports). They sell all this in one bundle for less than $80! You are getting anti-virus protection for up to 11 computers for less than $8 a piece – just try and find another anti-virus vendor that can beat that price and provide the smooth integration that avast! does with the WHS console.
The good news is that once you install avast! to all the computers on your home network (sorry, no automatic deploy yet) a single click will let you deploy the license to all of them.
It’s obvious that avast! has put a lot of time and effort into making their anti-virus solution integrate well into the “connected home”. For years the only way to get centralized virus scanning and control was to invest a lot of money in a corporate anti-virus solution. With this release of avast! professional family pack they have brought many of the same features down to the consumer level for a fraction of the price.
Considering this is really a v1 release for their WHS edition I am very impressed with all the features they have added right out of the gate. I am sure as time goes by we’ll see more WHS console integration to further integrate it into the home network. I’d personally like to see the ability to control all the settings of the client PC’s through the console – such as which plug-ins to allow (IM, email, etc.) as well as a bit tighter security to not allow the clients to override the WHS console settings. Still, even as it stands now, avast! is definitely the choice for WHS users. Once you start centralizing many of your home networking tasks you will never want to go back and do it the “one PC at a time” way again!
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-professional-family-pack.html
by Robert Stinnett (www.robertstinnett.com)
Thanks to our correspondent Andrew Edney who is at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2008) we have some pictures and information for you direct from the event in Las Vegas.
Really cool are all of the columns outside the South Hall entrance are wrapped in WHS advertisements.
Andrew says apart from the biggest news about Power Pack 1 (PP1), there isn’t a great deal to report Windows Home Server wise. In the Microsoft area they have 2 different stands for Windows Home Server, both doing the same thing which is talking about it and doing demos.
Other things on the MS stand include Microsoft Surface which turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface, but you cant get near it because of the amount of people.
HP have a big stand, and are showing off MediaSmart Server, which they also won a show award for.
Many thanks Andrew Edney for reporting for us from CES 2008 one of the worlds major technology-related trade shows.
British magazine Personal Computer World has an online review of the HP MediaSmart Server EX470. They state its “Slow off the starting blocks, but HP’s Windows Home Server interface is polished”. Read the review here.
