Microsoft Windows Home Server Review

I both use and tech support Servers, Macs, Windows (XP and Vista) as well as hardware and although I have a certificate in Network Administration and work on Windows Servers daily, I really love WHS.   It is easy to install and easy to setup and has just the right features for a home user.  I have run Windows Small Business Server, Linux, Mac OSX Server and now WHS and out of all of those WHS Is by far the easiest to setup and manage with the best of features for the home user.  It's a great tool for file sharing and backing up your PC's as well as hosting Web sites and remoting into your home desktop.  It has all the features that any home user could possibly want/need at a fraction of the cost and with minimal setup.

The only drawback is that you really need a pretty 'beefy' computer to run it on.  I have an AMD Machine with 3 GB of Ram and 5 - 250gig HDD's.   That's a terabyte of storage!!  I have a ton of music, movies, web graphics, photos plus all my documents and I have only taken up 230 GB of space.  I also have 40 GB of PC backups!

Don't think you HAVE to purchase the hardware with this software.  I purchased the components for my machine and built it myself then installed WHS.  Just make sure you have at least 3gb of Ram and as much HDD as you can afford for the ultimate experience.  Today's fast processors are also necessary to run this software.  I don't believe there is a 64bit version out yet, but the 32 bit  version runs well on my 64 bit AMD processor.

If your looking for an easy way to share your  files or photos (both at home and on the net), with great security and easy setup you can't go wrong with WHS.