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Beware: HP support won't last after 1 year

Customer Rating:
Did you know that HP dropped support of EX470/EX475 (earlier versions of MediaSmart) after the 1 year warranty, and they will not even repair it or provide spare parts? That's right - I was willing to pay HP to fix my unit, and they wouldn't... This may happen to your EX49x too, and you'll hear the same advice from HP tech support as I did: "Buy a new machine and plug your hard drives into it."

nothing but headaches

Customer Rating:
I have had this server for 6 months now. The media collection hardly ever works. I have to reset the sever to factory settings remove the software and reinstall at least every 2 weeks. it is nothing more then a very expensive paper weight.

Great way to backup for those who don't like to.

Customer Rating:
The unit was simple to setup. Some of the tools installed by HP aren't documented very well but a simple internet search will give you more info than you would ever need. Easy to add extra drives. Easy to manage. For those who are a little more experienced with servers, you can connect your printers to it and share them to every PC connected to the Server, which is great if you own a laptop and like to be wireless. (You have to remote in using the Start>Run>mstsc command on your Windows PC to install printer drivers/software to share them - a little extra experience is needed here, ALSO don't use this command to install a bunch of extra software unless you want your server to run slow or become unstable)

It has a Celeron processor but since you don't sit in front of it running applications you will never notice, it doesn't require too much power to backup files and share printers.

Overall, this is a very simple and reliable way to backup files and entire PCs, which nobody likes to do. It does it automatically while you sleep!

Frustrating experience setting it up

Customer Rating:
It's a good product once you installed the software on your computer(s). Everything seems to work quite naturally.

The problem and frustration? I have 4 computers at home. No problem setting up Windows Home Server on my two Dell laptops (like a breeze), but no luck trying to set up WHS on my HP laptop, even though it belongs to the same brand as the HP EX485 server! I called the tech support at HP perhaps 4 times already. To their credit, the tech support folks are very friendly, and tried their best to help. But after trying every trick they can think of, my HP laptop still cannot install the WHS Connector. And I do mean EVERY TRICK (from disabling/uninstalling firewall/antivirus to modifying NetBIOS to setting up new user account to changing registry). The same non-descriptive error message shows up every time I tried to install the software.

At this point, I don't know if the culprit is the HP home server or the Windows Home Server software (although I suspect the latter more). Either way, the experience has been decidedly mixed. I have never before had problem installing ANY software I want to install.

And by the way, my iMac with OS X 10.4 (Tiger) is not compatible with this server. You need at OS X 10.5 or higher.

Works great, no complaints

Customer Rating:
I've been using this server to back up my digital files for about six months now. (I'm an illustrator/graphic artist and my work files usually get pretty big.) So far, I have no complaints.