A first look: Inside Windows Home Server (Customer Technology Preview)

Don't get me wrong. I completely understand the concept of WHS and the abilities that it may withhold. It completely makes sense to me. Its just that when I hear the words "Home" and "Server", I immediately think of the average person walking into their preferred tech store & asking about storage, backups, security, etc. It may be to much for the average person to handle. I'm sure even the sales associate may agree. Who will the sales really go to? To people like you and me willing to sit down and make WHS work to its ability; putting in the effort. The average user will end up spending more time worrying about his/her WHS rather than downloading iTunes and sharing digital photos. The average joe most likely does not put work & entertainment together in the same sentence so to speak. They do not want to worry about it. But trust me, I wish the best.

Sure, people *could* sit around and create a backup plan for all of their PCs, but why should they? Most people don't like to tinker with their PC settings. They want to actually use it as a tool to get things done.

MSFT is trying to solve a problem that is only going to get worse as more people store more digital media -- data loss. And when you're talking about all of the digital photos that you've taken over the past several years or your entire iTunes music collection that you spent a few hundred bucks on, it's easy to understand why people will be interested in WHS.

It has nothing to do with laziness. It's about convenience, ease of use and a feeling of security.

Once WHS is setup, the end user doesn't really need to do anything to it, unless they want to restore their PC from a backup. Updates are handled automatically.

My backups occur overnight. As long as I see my little green WHS icon in the taskbar every morning, I know everything is working and that my data is backed up.

for WHS to be released before you begin making judgments about it based on your opinion alone.