A brand new build of Windows Home Server has been released today to all Beta 2 participants - this is great news as at one point, it looked like Beta 2 may have been the only beta build that was made available to the public!
Unfortunately, I’m still away in New Zealand, so haven’t had a chance to play with the bits, but you’ll find a load of new features that have been added to the new build, including:
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A more complete and simplified “out of box” experience, including an easy, 7-step setup process after installation, personalized home server naming, and the ability to configure a standalone Windows Home Server from an existing home computer.
- You can now set up and configure Remote Access capabilities from the Windows Home Server Console, including selection of a personalized web address from the Windows Live Custom Domains service.
- You can enable or disable home network health notifications and can dictate where and when various notifications are displayed on their computers.
- Users can clearly define their password settings, and designate a password hint to assist in recovering a forgotten Windows Home Server password.
- And you can now add and remove Windows Home Server Add-in programs developed with the Windows Home Server Software Development Kit.
I’m looking forward to giving it a go!
April 28th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
This release was a huge step forward!
With beta 2 I had one computer that I could not backup without getting an error. The update has solved this.
Being able to select specific messages to ignore and which clients the warnings are displayed on is also significant. My wife actually thought her laptop was not backing up when she say the error from the computer having trouble!
The additions to the console also look like it will reduce to virtually zero the need to have direct physical access to the server.
The one downside to this update is that I am fairly sure beta 2 included by network drivers however the April CTP does not include them meaning an additional step of downloading drivers on a separate computer and connecting again to server before it is usable.
Not including network drivers, which I have seen commented on the connect site as being “by design” is a potential huge pitfall that the development team will hopefully address before the final version, at least for a wide selection of more common network adapters. For an operating system intended to be run as a headless box network connectivity is huge.