Windows Home Server Free Trial now with Power Pack 3

So you have been hearing all of these great things about Windows Home Server, but still aren’t sure if you are ready to buy one (even though there are some great holiday discounts that you don’t want to miss!).

Windows Home Server Power Pack 3, Waiting For You

Tuesday is here at last, and for Windows Home Server owners that means one thing… Power Pack 3 Day! Microsoft have released PP3 for download via Windows Update, and it’s free and waiting for you to download. Simply open your WHS Console, go to the Settings dialog, and click Update Now in the General section. You’ll need to restart your home server, and each hope computer connected to Windows Home Server, after which Power Pack 3 will be yours! Let’s recap on what’s new, courtesy of the Windows Team Blog : Windows 7 Libraries integration When you install the Windows Home Server Connector and log on a computer running Windows 7, you can access the Windows Home Server shared folders from the Windows 7 libraries. Windows 7 Action Center backup warning suppression After you install the Windows Home Server Connector to enable the home server backup for your computer running Windows 7, you can suppress the Action Center warning reminding you that Windows Backup has not been set up

Top 10 reasons to use Windows Home Server in your SOHO

Since we had such a great response from our previous post on the Top 10 reasons to use Windows Home Server , we thought it would be beneficial to share our thinking on the business side of things. Don’t let the name Windows Home Server fool you into thinking that this product was created for home use only.

Windows Home Server Add-ins: Lights-Out, WebGuide, and Whiist

Windows Home Server was designed to “grow with you”. That may be obvious when it comes to adding additional hard drives but also includes the option to install extra software features to help customize your Home Server. The development community has created “add-ins” for Windows Home Server that extends its capabilities in fun, exciting, and useful ways. There are currently over 100 add-ins available for download.

Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 available November 24th includes enhancements for Windows 7-based computers

The Windows Home Server Team is pleased to announce that Power Pack 3 will be available in all shipping languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish) on November 24th, 2009. Power Pack 3 will be made available to existing users via Windows Update. Users need to have Windows Home Server with Power Pack 2 already installed on their home server. Power Pack 3 will automatically install as part of Windows Update if Automatic Updates is enabled on the home server.

Does WHS need AV? Here’s a Good YES Reason

Over at the HomeServerShow, a very interesting story just popped up that I had to pass along.  “Do you need Anti-Virus on your Media Center PC’s?” is the title and it offers up some good reasons why you might want to think twice about whether a computer needs an AV solution or not. Just a little snippet from the article may get you thinking How did I come about such an exploit you may ask?  Downloading actor images, and meta data via the MetaBrowser utility!  I never imagined I would run across an exploit in such a way but there is also a good chance that it’s just a false positive.  I don’t blame MetaBrowser for it but should we be concerned? about the need for an AV solution for your WHS.  You may not access the web through a browser on your WHS, but if a utility like My Movies for WHS looks for meta data, it might just grab more than it intended. Food for thought…

Just Landed: Diskeeper 2010 HomeServer Edition

Looks like the defrag guys are starting to ramp up their next releases as today I received a copy of the all-new Diskeeper 2010 HomeServer Edition. At first glance, it looks like Diskeeper 2010 offers one key improvement from last year’s release, a new feature called Intelliwrite, which Diskeeper claim “prevents the majority of disk fragmentation from ever occurring, dramatically improving Windows system performance.” IntelliWrite is a ground breaking technology that prevents the majority of fragmentation from ever occurring, dramatically improving Windows system performance. A small percentage of fragmentation is not preventable and will be eliminated by Automatic Defragmentation. The combination of IntelliWrite and Automatic Defragmentation will keep your system running at optimum performance in the most effective and efficient way possible.