Asus announces Atom-based Windows Home Server

Posted on 19 Nov 2009 at 15:58

Asus has announced the Home Server TS, a network storage device equipped with an Atom processor and Microsoft's Windows Home Server operating system.

Asus' new Home Server TS is a computer running the Windows Home Server operating system. It's designed specifically to store and share your files amongst all your other networked computers. The processor and amount of RAM fitted in a network storage device can often limit its file copying performance. We're therefore pleased to see that the TS will come equipped with a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor and 2GB of RAM, which should avoid this bottleneck.

The TS will have two SATA hard disk bays as well as six USB 2.0 and two eSATA ports for connecting external disks, so it should be able to accommodate plenty of storage. The TS will also come with 500GB of online storage free for a year. We're sceptical about the usefulness of this feature since Windows Home Server lets you remotely access your files from any web-connected computer anyway.

The TS should have all the other features we've come to expect from a Windows Home Server, such as streaming media to a network media player and automatic backup, but Asus has also added its own IP camera plug-in. This allows the TS to work with multiple IP cameras so you can monitor and manage all your security footage in one place.

Asus' Home Server TS looks like a very promising Windows Home Server, but the company has yet to confirm pricing, capacities or availability. Hopefully the Home Server TS will actually become available for purchase, unlike the announced but never released Eee Station NAS. We'll bring you a full review as soon as we can.

Author: Alan Lu

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