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Expert guide to Windows Home Server

Posted on 13 Nov 2007 at 15:42

The future

All in all, it's a promising start for Home Server. But where's the product heading in the future? Home Server add-ins are a potential sleeping giant, used to bring additional features to both the back end and/or the Console. Installed from the settings dialog, there are a number of these in the wild already, ranging from relatively simple Wake-on LAN facilities, to more sophisticated tools for running any program as a service, DHCP serving and web server admin tools. These are easy to add and remove, and it's likely that they'll come pre-installed by vendors in future.

Add-ins are one way of expanding the feature set, but there are also plenty of plans being rumoured for the next version. Many of these focus on media handling, since this first version falls well short of being the true media hub it initially appears. There's no explicit integration with Windows Media Center, for example, and while it's possible to hack the Registry into recording to a network share, it isn't at all pretty - a shame given the potential.

It's also a pig to try to move any User folders across from either XP or Vista, the latter kick-starting the appalling Sync Center, and this would need work from both the Windows and WHS teams to put right. Finally, it's almost inevitable that Domain-level control features will creep into WHS - being able to prevent internet access on PCs without the firewall switched on, for example, or centrally administered Windows Updates. Given the ambitious aims of the first version, and the response of the enthusiast community, it's certainly one to watch - now we just need to see how it fares in the wider world.

Author: Ross Burridge