Next version of Windows Home Server promises Time Machine-like UI
By Donald Melanson 
posted September 8th 2008 11:43AM
posted September 8th 2008 11:43AM
As we've seen, Microsoft's job postings can often be one of the best places to get early word of potential new products, and it looks like the company's recruiters have done it again, with a new ad offering a glimpse of what might be in store for the next version of Windows Home Server. Most interestingly, the posting includes the little tidbit that Microsoft is looking for someone to help it create a "Time Machine compete UI for backup and restore," as well as a Windows Media Center integration UI, and a Live Mesh integration UI. According to Microsoft, that will help it position Home Server as "THE backup and Media Server within the home" by the time this next release rolls around which, considering that they're still looking for people to help build it, likely won't be anytime soon.[Via istartedsomething, thanks Anand]
QFT. The basics have been around for a long time (command line), the real value-added is how to make those tools intuitive and fool-proof enough that that are used by the end user. You can give your buddy a unix super-computer with a CL interface, or an eeeePC. The super-computer can do 10,000,000 (approx) more things than the eeeeeePC, but your buddy will beg to differ.
We have a mixed environment at home, a couple of Mac's a three laptops running Vista/XP/Ubunto, a media playing ATOM PC, an Xbox 360 and a couple of netbooks.
We use Windows Home Server to store and stream all of our media simply because of the built in duplication and nightly backups and its media streaming abilities are so easy. Oh and we had a space P4 2.8/1GB box with a pair of 250GB drives sitting around about a year ago.
At present we have 6 internal drives and 5 external ones totaling about 5TB of usable space. Machine spec stays otherwise the same apart from an additional ATA-133 card for the additional drives.
After physically losing a (Vista) laptop a few months ago, we restored onto a similar machine and everything worked exactly as advertised. Subsequently we lost a drive in a desktop and again, the restore worked perfectly and in under an hour we had a new 750GB drive up and running (boot drive) in a machine that previously had a 200GB one. WHS restore was dirt easy - boot from a CD, add the drivers from a USB stick and off we went.
The Macs use time machine, but in an ironic incident the Lacie external drive overheated and cooked its self recently, replacement was easy, but expensive, but it would have been so much easier if we could backup our Mac's to the WHS.
WHS is a very neat product for people with a lot of data and (in our case) media that do not want to rely on single drives and remembering to copy things around.
The headline is misleading, it just suggest some Time Machine like UI...
Lots of companies copied Microsoft's UI innovations as well, do you know the "red worm" under wrong words?
It was introduced by Microsoft Office back in 1997
1) 3.5mm headphone jack
2) Shortcut keys moved to the bottom of the QWERTY keyboard.
3) Black model (?)
^ Damn 1Password!
I can picture it now:
"We like to call it, 'Back to the Future'"
Apple fanboys need not worry.
MS has moved it's crack Vista marketing team over to the WHS and they are going to create 6 to 8 different versions (SKUs) of WHS.
Apple fanboys need not worry.
MS has moved it's crack Vista marketing team over to the WHS and theyare going to create 6 to 8 different versions (SKUs) of WHS.
Maybe they should look at Genie-soft's Genie Timeline! An amazing replica to Appl'es Time Machine for Windows! And they are working on a new version that will include system backup that is said to be released within 2 months.
Kudos to Genie-soft! Maybe Microsoft should just keep it to the pros and learn to partner with companies that know what they are doing when it comes to backup..
Focus on making Windows less buggy and annoying and offer integrated backup software by the pros!
If only they would have Genie Timeline preinstalled with Windows.. easy and quick to setup.. with non-stop protection