As part of their “Stay at Home Server” campaign, Microsoft commissioned a children’s book called “Mommy, Why Is There a Home Server In The House”, which for some was the highlight of CES. Takes all sorts 
Anyway, the book is a faux parental guidance title used to explain the purpose of Windows Home Server, and is great fun. I have a copy to give away to WGS readers. As ever, just answer this challenging question, and the book is yours.
Question: Why IS there a home server is your house?
Winner will be pulled out at random on 17th Jan 2008.
Update: The competition is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered!
January 10th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Because all of the cool kids have one and I want to be one too of course!
That and the fact that I love having a large, easy to use and expand NAS server that I can deploy custom code to.
January 10th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Let me count the ways - multiple computer backup, file duplication, media sharing, xbox streaming, expandable data warehouse that is so easy to install and use that anyone can do it.
January 10th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Because the power requirements for a Home SuperComputer were too great.
January 10th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Because it supplies me with hours of tinkering fun, and saved me from hours of nagging from my wife asking when her broken computer would be fixed. (the answer for those keeping track at home was 1 hour, 20 minutes. Took me time to replace the hard drive)
January 10th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
It was a lot cheaper than hiring a full time police officer trained in IT (To Serve and Protect…) :p
January 10th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Well because on a cold day in November I fired up my PC to find out my 2nd hard disk died with all my family photo’s, emails, tax records, music, and home movies on it. $2,000 later I have my data back thanks to a recovery place. I knew then I needed to do something about backup’s and also wanted a files server and a cool new toy and a WHS is a lot cheaper then $2,000.
January 10th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
The wonderful light show of the HP MediaSmart is way cooler to gather around than a fireplace!
January 10th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Because my desktop server couldn’t support more than four internal drives and the external USB drives were cluttering up my desk. Plus, my movie collection (mostly kids videos) was expanding beyond the capacity of a single hard drive and I didn’t want to have the kids browse multiple shares to find their favorite (insert Dora, Transformers, Xmen, Barbie, etc) episode to watch on the Media Center, Plus, Infrant, Buffalo, et al couldn’t use mismatched disks, Drobo didn’t have a network interface, and UnRAID was too hardware specific.
Plus, I got a free backup solution out of the deal
January 10th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
for streaming audio and video and controloign the home automation system
January 10th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Oh the relative peace and harmony a Home Server brings! Single centralised filestore - dad doesn’t need to get thrown off his PC just so the kids can access their ‘homework’ files. Single centralised video library - no arguments over which programme the PVR under the TV is going to record, just use the PC upstairs to record 2 more channels and stream the recording back to the TV. Single centralised photo album - no hugging around the PC upstairs to view the latest snaps, view them from the laptop in the kitchen or even on the TV. Single centralised music collection - no searching for CDs or being disappointed by the fact you favourite CD was the plate used by your yongest son for his snack. Just look up the album on the streaming box, view the cover art and play it on the good old hi-fi!
Don’t you just love the connected home - at last it starts to make sense!
January 10th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Because having a computer to people ratio of 5 to 1 was not enough!!!!
Also it really was time have some sensible form of backup for all that IT data.
As an added bonus after posting this I will check on the status of my system from 4000 miles away.
January 11th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Because Mommy said Daddy was inadequate and needed help.
January 11th, 2008 at 2:31 am
So my house will be a safer place to keep data
January 11th, 2008 at 4:06 am
My employer agreed to pay for it - Yahoo!!!!!!!!!
January 11th, 2008 at 6:48 am
I kept saying I’ll backup tomorrow, when is tomorrow? Now I don’t have to find out when tomorrow is. It’s also a fun product
January 11th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Because its so fun to demonstrate its functionality to friends who always in amazement asks where they can get one to.
January 11th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Because I’m a Daddy that loves Mommy very much.
January 11th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Because i’m the geek and i sad so!!!!!!
January 11th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Because when I discovered that at some point during the last two months I had accidentally deleted a folder containing hundreds of irreplaceable photos, I merely opened up the backup taken by Windows Home Server in mid-November. With a simple Copy/Paste, I got all my photos back in a couple of moments. Whew!
January 11th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I wanted one, and not so many people have one so its still cool…
(the true reason is that i’ve tried to play with server stuff home and i never got it to do what i wanted, the way i wanted… whs does it alone and does a great job too….dream come true for me.)
January 11th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
‘cos Daddy’s a geek
January 11th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I relocated from the UK to the US late 2007 and had all my music and other important content (including probably the most important, pictures of my 2 young kids) spread across NAS, USB Attached storage, DVDs and PC hard drives.
I am building a new house and with that a lot of new technology, especially in my home theatre (uk spelling
) and in my office. So I needed something that would give me piece of mind regarding my content whilst in this transition state.
In steps the HomeServer. It currently lives on our breakfast bar and as it is not ugly like my PCs and laptops my wife accepts it (WAF).
It has now got many additional uses though. My friends and family were constantly asking for pictures of us and how things are going. I now use the HP photo functionality to provide access to our photos. I also give pure direct access to the photos share to a few.
I will be setting up a blog on this for friends and family once the new house is complete.
What started out as a box to give me piece of mind will not be central in our new house. I bought the 470 and immediately added an additional 1Tb and a 300Gb SATA drive I had in another machine.
I love this machine and I will always have a server in my house now
PS: I would really love to get this book as it would be so much more fun to read to my son than ‘the hungry caterpillar’ or ‘Spots day out’ or ‘That’s not my dinosaur’ books
January 11th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I am considering a home server and have not get purchased one. But it is an excellent idea and I am getting ready to trial the software. I currently run a server with 2003 server on it to do all these things and for home use it is not as user friendly as a home server is obviously built to be. I am also trialing server 2008, a fantastic product. I do however use my server 03 to do backups, share files, act as a domain etc. So Home server looks like some welcome relief to these more time consuming management tasks.
January 11th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Because I could re-purpose an old workstation as a backup solution for my home network. To me an added bonus is the shared folders for pictures, music and files.
January 11th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Because of the ease of PC Backup, expandable storage, media sharing … and because it rocks.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Well, I don’t have one YET, but it’s in the works. Hoping to complete it by tax season this spring with part of my refund. I just need a case, two hard drives, and a copy of WHS.
But for what I plan, it will serve as a much simpler and more reliable form of backup to our PC’s in our home than external or NAS drives or simply adding multiple drives to each PC, which was quickly going to add up in price and begin to approach the cost of a WHS build which I already had some of the parts for. It will share media, once and for all, on a dedicated PC with excellent ease of access and the ability to stream and even retrieve online (!).
And most important of all is backing up precious files on a routine basis without any intervention on my part, and reassurance that recovery is a few simple steps away in the event of a disaster. This comes at a time when I’ve already suffered through the effects of not having WHS to save me when a few files were lost when my PC was stolen during a robbery in our home and thankfully I had an external hard drive they neglected to take but it died shortly after due to damage on their part as they ripped much of my electronics off my desk to take my monitor and my PC. Having an inconspicuous server I can tuck away and physically secure will be a life saver to me, and piece of mind. It finely makes sense to have a dedicated server in the home and not try to “dumb down” a full-blown server OS for personal use!
January 12th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Because I had an old P4 pc and several hard drives laying around after building a new desktop this summer. I wanted to consolidate them and make a NAS server. I tried to use linux but didn’t have the time or patience to keep tweeking it. I learned about WHS and thought perfect! Everything I had was already windows based so I now have a tons of room to serve up all the files, music, videos, and pictures to both computers and the xbox. It’s Great!!
January 12th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Because having a central location for all my files makes life so much easier.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:56 am
MP3s, movies, and games are just data.
After starting a family, I realize there is some data that one should value much higher than the aforementioned.
January 13th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Because it will a) save you when a PC belonging to a family member dies and you need a quick restore, b) when that 30GB hard drive in a family PC isn’t big enough and you find a great sale on a 250GB, changing drives is a 30 minute vs. 6 hour affair.
January 15th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I have a home server because I work a second, part time job as a software consultant. Everything my clients send me, or the development I do for them, is priceless. Having Windows Home Server back up my laptop, and my server, incrementally means I can always give my clients the best info. Also, during a pitch or presentation or working away from my home office, I can easily access anything I forgot by remotely connecting to my home server.