I'm one of the rare ones indeed I suppose, but I actually switched from a fedora server that I have had running for almost 10 years (migrated from redhat obviously) to a new machine and went with Windows Home Server. After using the beta and then an eval copy of the production release, I was convinced that for my money (including time) it made more sense. The server console and the plugin architecture are very nice features, well worth the cost by themselves. We are an OS agnostic house for the most part, in that we will use what we find to be the best fit for the situation at hand. We use mac desktops/laptops around the house, our gateway for the house runs on a linux box, we have tivo's feeding our televisions, and our file server is now a WHS. Biggest reason? They got disk management (mostly) right. Like Drobo, when you need more storage you just plug in a disk. A disk fails, you swap it out for another disk and the server rebuilds the array. I know that using a combination of raid and lvm you can get this from a fedora box but I really didn't see the point in putting my time into it. As a husband, father and full time coder I just don't have time anymore to futz around with our file server when I'm home. I hate to say it about a MS product, but WHS just works.

With regards to updates, the osx86 guys usually have 'patched' updates available very quickly that can be downloaded and run safely. Just don't install the patches provided by apple and it works beautifully. It's really not that hard.

That's great ryan. Some of us pay ~$25 per month for a HD DVR (phoenix metro area) and it actually works out as a cost savings, even with a cable card. Personally, I have used both and I can't imagine going back to the cable company dvr. The network features alone make it worth any extra money. Moving shows between tv's and offloading them to my computer is priceless, for me anyway.

Chris

This is all I've been waiting for. Please let it be true!

Everyone talks about how cheap and great the DVR service from the cable company is but I don't see it here in Phoenix. We have Cox and we pay $18/month for our DVR and $5/month for "Cox Digital Video Recorder Service". AND, the SA8300HD is a big piece of junk. The eSata port is nice for adding storage but mine constantly loses the connection and I have to hard-reset the cable box to get it to recognize the external drive. I am drooling over the Tivo HD box and will be purchasing one in the near future. Please give us the multi room viewing tivo!

Please please please PLEASE figure out some way to give us HD with the series 2 networking features TIVO! I think it's a bigger deal even than the price of the Series 3 for a lot of people.

I cannot wait to be rescued from Windows Mobile Hell!!!!!!!!

This is exactly the head unit I have been begging for for years. Congrats to this guy for getting it done!

Chris

Cox HD DVR hooked up to a Mitsubishi rear projection TV. I'd love to upgrade though!

Chris

Ooooh, I have an idea...let's take this one step further! We can have one piece of the computer that contains all the heavy processing capacity and the hard disks and then have another piece connect to it from another room! We could come up with some sort of technology that would connect the two pieces and allow the piece with the display and the optical drives, let's call it a 'thin client', to connect to the ...ummm... 'server'! We could even extend this further and allow several of these 'thin clients' to connect to the 'server' from different parts of the house! WOW! Someone should really try and bring this technology to market!

Chris