The originality police may be knocking on my door shortly for that headline, but on Tuesday night my jetlag really decided to kick in as I awoke at 2.30am and couldn’t get back to sleep. So Wednesday ended up as a bit of a blur!
We were back to campus for the second day of our Windows Home Server deep dive, and were given the opportunity to talk with more of the WHS team around specific areas of the product, as well as understand the work that the team does with OEMs to launch and support the product in various regions around the world.
We got to see a whole range of WHS hardware, most of which have been reviewed here on the site, as well as the original hockey puck prototype which was handled extremely carefully.
There was long discussions around Remote Access, Home Server Setup, SDK and add-in support, as well as a look to the future in some other areas. Again, the focus was on the features you guys want to see in the product, and discussion around the challenges faced to deliver them (and there are many!).
I’d like to use this public opportunity to thank Todd Headrick, Kevin Beares and all of the Windows Home Server team for giving up a lot of time to both arrange and sit down with us for two full days to hear our feedback and discuss where the product should develop, particularly at a time when they’re still working hard to fix and test the DE bug before beta and release.
As previously mentioned, I won’t go into specifics, but it’s fair to say that the whole team have been severely challenged over the last few months with the DE bug, but do seem excited about the potential of Windows Home Server. Having chatted through a whole series of potential features for future versions, I left feeling confident that they’re absolutely aware of what you’ve told me you’d like to see in the product - whether that happens or not - well, if it doesn’t it won’t be through a lack of desire.
In the meantime, keep hammering the blog and forums here at wGS with the features you want to see in Windows Home Server - both the big, stretching visionary ideas as well as the simple tweaks that will make the product easier, and more rewarding to use. Whilst you may not always see them, the team are listening.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Terry, not sure if this falls under NDA but is the DE fix a major rewrite of DE or more of a patch? And will the DE fix reduce CPU utilization to any degree? Finally, has the DE bug caused them halt work on the next version of WHS. I’d like to thnk they are able to work on both at the same time. Thanks!
April 17th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Hi John
I think that info is probably covered within my NDA right now, so to be on the safe side, I’ll stay out of the specifics.
The observation I’d make however, is that with such a serious issue like data corruption, if the fix was a simple patch I guess the team would be very focused on getting it out very, very quickly. So far, it’s taken 4 months and previous communications direct from the team publically have suggested that the team are working very hard to get the fix designed, built, tested and released. One data point I’ll add is that the guys working on it also know their stuff very, very well. So I’m sure you can do the maths
It would be great at some point in time for the WHS team to discuss the issue in detail and any positive implications the fix has made to Windows Home Server, but I’ll leave that for them to do.
Best wishes
Terry
April 17th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
One thing that would immediately make WHS more useful and not cost Microsoft a dime is to bundle Remote Desktop for Vista Home/Home Premium into the product. It’s just a (preexisting) DLL and a registry change.
Why force people to upgrade every machine they have to Ultimate just so they can remote into their home network? I’m already paying $700+ to get the WHS, one of whose main draws is to allow remoting from anywhere on the web in an easy manner. Now I have to fork out hundreds more because Microsoft sees remoting as a differentiator between Premium and Ultimate.
Granted, if you look around enough, you can find hacks around this, but this really should be bundled into the product. Otherwise, stop advertising this feature.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
@BrianE:
The Windows Home Server team cannot bundle RDP for Vista Home Premium because that component falls under an entirely different division of the company. The Windows Client team decides what features that are going to include into each SKU of the client operating system, and it is 100% up to them to decide for the next release of Windows whether or not that would be something they would want to do.
Microsoft has seen up until the advent of Windows Home Server that Remote Desktop was more of an Enterprise component and as such excluded it from their home SKUs.
I know that there are many suggestions filed at the WHS team to get RDP support for Home SKUs, and we just have to wait and see what the next major release of Windows Client holds.
-Tom
April 18th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Tom’s absolutely right, as are you, BrianE - as a consumer, this completely sucks and someone at a higher level than the individual product teams probably needs to unlock this. Fingers crossed this gets nailed at some point.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Hi Terry,
(reacting to JohnCz): They’ll probable know their stuff very, very well, but as many IT Pro’s (Like Paul Thurrot) have pointed out, they should not have included DE in the first place, MS allready had the technology in house, so why the WHS team reinvented the wheel is big question….and for us (users) a very bitter one, given the fact that it blew up in their face, leaving us with some kind of constant fear (to corrupt data or not to corrupt data, that IS the question).
ON the other hand, WHS stays a wonderfull product, and I hope that you can convince them to listen to you (and your blog) for new features / prioriticing the right questions (but I also do hope, that they will look inhouse for existing technology (like RDP) before re-inventing what they allready have .
greetz
Geert
April 18th, 2008 at 8:35 am
LOL, typical Micorosft, lets reinvent the wheel again… I don’t understand while people still use microsoft products - such low value for such high price. All those complaining about how you have to keep paying for upgrades etc… Why not go open source - great software, great support, great flexibility - and guess what: no cost.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Hi Geert
Hindsight is always a wonderful thing - it’s really easy for all of us, including Paul T, to pick over the bones of decisions that were made in the past. But, in any area of innovation you have to be prepared to take risks, break rules, do things that haven’t been done before. If creating a home server product was easy, we’d have had one 5 years ago.
In terms of listening to the community, they ask for input from all of us - blogs like WGS help filter some of the feedback, but you can head down to connect.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver and pass through your feedback individually too.
Cheers
Terry
April 18th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Terry,
I didn’t want to offend someone and since I’m a programmer myself I know everything about taking risks, etc (and mostly picking up the pieces after some manager/poject leader decides he’s the new Bill Gates).
As I’ve said before, I still believe WHS is great, I use it everyday and I do recommend it to my co-workers.
Concerning the feed-back. I personally believe (and hope !!) that remarks from blogs like WGS and people like you weigh in more than my individual feedback. And that’s the way it should be…..
greetz
Geert.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Hi Geert
No worries - no offence taken whatsoever
With regard to the feedback - it’s absolutely important that everyone gets involved at a personal level. I’m just one guy like you - I just have a blog, that’s all. There’s things that are important to me in WHS that may not be important to you. Things that you want in the product that haven’t even occurred to me yet! So make sure you sign up on Connect and give your feedback - it’ll go to the team directly!
Best wishes
Terry
April 19th, 2008 at 12:03 am
I work in the high end residential custom home automation industry. I work with Control 4, Elan Home Systems, ADA, and AMX for one of the largest companies in the country. I personally have built a WHS and have many ideas for the WHS team if they are interested. They need to start thinking about home automation and integration with audio and HD video distribution. Feel free to email me with any questions the team might!!!!