First Look HP's new Windows Home Server

 

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Posted on 19 Oct 2009 at 18:42

Windows Home Servers (WHS) are an alternative to network attached storage (NAS) devices for sharing files amongst all your network connected computers. They're basically modified PCs running Microsoft's Windows Home Server operating system instead of a standard version of Windows. They've also been more expensive than a NAS though with little additional benefit and so haven't caught on. HP's latest WHS, the MediaSmart EX490, has several intriguing features that makes it much more attractive than previous WHS models we've seen.

The EX490 comes fitted with a 1TB hard disk but has easily accessible spare disk trays that can accommodate up to three more disks. It can automatically copy music, video and photos from all your networked computers so they can all be accessed from any networked computer through Windows Explorer or through a web playback interface that supports features such as music playlists and browsing photos by the date they were taken. Alternatively, it worked flawlessly as an iTunes music server.

If you want to watch videos stored on the EX490 through the web playback interface, they'll need to be re-encoded into a very specific MPEG4 file format. This can be done automatically in the background by the EX490 itself instead of by your PC. This is handy if you have a computer that's less capable than the EX490's 2.2GHz single core Celeron processor and 2GB of RAM, but if you have a more powerfully-equipped PC, especially a dual or quad core model, then your video will be encoded more quickly on your computer instead.

Files stored on the EX490 can be accessed from any internet-connected computer, as well as the computers on your local network. For this to work, Windows Home Server will attempt to automatically configure your router if it supports UPnP port forwarding ?€" otherwise you'll have to do this yourself. Interestingly, photos stored on the EX490 can be automatically uploaded to a photo sharing service such as Flickr or Picasa, although we had trouble getting it to recognise our Picasa account in our initial tests.

Our initial impressions of HP's MediaSmart EX490 are positive, but it will face stiff competition from the latest NAS models, such as Netgear's upcoming Stora which can also automatically upload your photos to a photo sharing website. The EX490 is available now from www.cclonline.com for £462 inc VAT. We'll bring you a full review of the EX490 shortly.

Author: Alan Lu