Once again Microsoft beats us about the head with a big stick and a black hole. It seems desperate to prove each and every product must be user tested for even the most squalid of defects. This involves several generations of use and exabytes of crash reports uploaded to HQ.

And after all is said and done, we have such gems as Outlook, AKA LookOut! It cannot find a contact by first name if you have chosen last name order. Even though you choose first name order upon entry, it still defaults the LookUp name to last name order, to be changed manually. My lsit of such featiures is at least 25 entries long, yet the master chef, Bill Gates, blogged a few weeks ago that Outlook remains the center of his daily desktop activity. One hour with the Outlook overlay software, NeoPro, and you'll never open Outlook again. Try it, Bill.

Today's topic, an ongoing report, is the fresh adventures of "WHS", that is, "Windows Home Server". I apologize profusely for the following. I do not like curse words in print, and I don't use them in person, unless I am hammering bent nails by myself. Nevertheless, I do have this private category for special software, and sometimes hardware: P.O.S.S. Piece of Shite Software; the lowest of the low.

We have in WHS a prime candidate. Not solely for its defects, but as well for the distance of the fall from its immense promise, that of advertising your grandma to backup her iTunes collection and photos of the grandkids from all the computers connected to her LAN. I start my review with a recent (two years after launch, three major revisions) user review from NewEgg -- whose automatic Buy This makes the recommendation that other buyers also bought both a Seagate hard disk and a Green hard disk!

To his gracious credit, this guy doesn't curse. Losing entire photo or music collections to a computer touted specifically for backup is tough to take, although he headed this common WHS occurrence off at the pass. This is the HP version of WHS. They are a company that frequently takes a Microsoft product and produces its own parallel software to make up for the holes in the original. After one or two versions of such torture they usually drop the product, as they just did with their quite good Media Extender.

HP EX 485

Reviewed By: NJ computer guy on 3/25/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

Pros: I installed a WD HDD and now I have no problems, can’t stress enough how highly recommend you get rid of the Seagate drives that come with these units! When paired with good hard drives the EX485 goes beyond my expectation and works flawless! The boys and girls at HP do need to product test more effectively before shipping off to customers, I do think considering that this is simply a revision product they should have done a better job.

Cons: These ship with Seagate 7200.11 drives and the firmware as we all know, well it doesn't work and the new firmware to fix these issues is just as bad! HP Tech support spent well over 20 hours with me before anyone said “hey maybe it's the firmware”! They really really don't want to replace these drives and do everything in there power to drag out the process. I think both HP and Seagate know they have a major problem and they are not sure yet how to fix this issues. I am glad to see most people have not experienced this problem, just be aware it is out there and when it does happen it makes you loose everything on your server! I lost everything twice before I told HP no more and switched to a WD drive. Basically I bought software and a Box to hold a drive, HP was not willing to send me anything other than a Seagate drive and I just can’t afford to loose my information for a third time!

Other Thoughts: Before you buy the EX485 just beware that there is a firmware problem with the hard drives in these units the 750GB Seagate drives that HP has used do have a firmware bug! Also be aware that green power drives are not recommended to be used in these servers and they also say Spinpoint drives have had problems as well as RE3 drives and any drives specifically used for a RAID setup! HP recommends using a non power saving SATA model not specifically designed for a RAID setup! If you have any questions call HP Tech support they will confirm this information. I find it a shame HP shipped these servers knowing there were firmware issues, this could be such a great product, but it has been marginalized by using Seagate drives. I understand that HP has a contract with Seagate and they are going to stick with them, bad move especially since a lot customers are not buying in this market environment! BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE