But did you know that with a little work, you can back up your Mac to any Windows Home Server machine?

Brent Friedman has a walkthrough on his blog which is well worth checking out. Take a look and let us know how you get on.

More Info: Time Machine Backups to WHS

Developer Nigel Wilks has just released a minor update to the add-in, with the following features and fixes:

• Added a favicon
• Improved the FirePlay Service to resolve Remote Access detection issues
• Resolves bug where Remote Access status is switched after install caused upnp issue
• Now generates a health alert if it can’t find FireFly

Download: Fireplay for Windows Home Server | Rate this Add-in | Discuss

You’ll find the deal tucked away at the end of the transaction, under storage devices.

More Info: HP Direct

Manufacturers are, of course, free to brand their machines as they wish but the same applies to owners who want to remove said branding. If you want to revert your remote home server website to the standard design which ships with generic home servers, then check out the great walkthrough from jesseweb.com.

You’ll be up and running in no time.

More Info: jesseweb.com

Over the past two weeks, you’ve been voting for your favourite idea from the final ten in your thousands – those votes, combined with the judges’ final view on feasibility have led us to the results, which are as follows:

1st Place
Home Calendar, Tasks, Contacts – Jared Finkenbinder
This add-in should use universal data stores such as ical and vcards to share data to multiple productivity suites such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Entourage, etc. This does not need to serve email, it is simply a way to have a centralized database for shared, common items for the family or home office.

2nd Place
Run TV Cards on WHS, Controlled from MCE Clients – Sven Halling
Allow the home server to run (MCE compatible) TV cards to record TV straight to the WHS storage, and be played from any client (MCE or other) connected to the network. Scheduling of recording shall be made from any MCE PC connected to the WHS. With this we get a truly networked TV function that also saves energy (as the WHS is the only machine that needs to run all the time).

3rd Place
Photo Manager – Name Witheld
A photo app on the home server that helps you organize your photos so they are easy to sort and easy to find what you are looking for.  This would include face recognition software to find all the photos for a certain person that you would have to go through all your albums to find.

4th Place
Windows Live Skydrive Add-in – Name Witheld
The main idea of this add-in is to provide an automated way to monitor folders on the Home Server and automatically back them up to Windows Live Skydrive which provides 25gb of free storage.

5th Place
WHS Windows Update Manager – Rob Cassie
Allow users to centrally manage Windows Update for all connected PC’s from the console.

6th Place
Time Machine – Simon Needham
Total turnkey, out of the box, it just works storage support for OS X Time Machine.

7th Place
Automatic Add-In Updater – Erik Madsen
An add-in that can automatically check for updates of add-ins and inform the user when there’s an update with a button to update the add-ins

8th Place
Microsoft Web Platform for WHS – Name Witheld
The Microsoft Web Platform for WHS add-in allows anyone to have easy access to some of the best website management systems on the planet (Wordpress, Drupal etc).  Microsoft even worries about the updates for you.

9th Place
Folder Monitoring + Notification Scheme – Adam Swift
This add-in will give the ability to set up a list of shared folders that will be monitored for file changes (adds or deletes) and will send out a notification to a list of registered users detailing the information on what has changed on the shared folders.  The notification could be set up as either an email alert or perhaps an RSS feed.

10th Place
WHS Undelete – Andrew Carr
Transfers a copy of any file deleted from the WHS into the recycle bin of the computer it was deleted on.

Voter Prize
Congratulations to Bryan Crosby whose vote was picked out at random, and wins a great home server prize, including the HP MediaSmart Server LX195 and a host of goodies.

As you’ll remember, the winning idea will be developed into a full Windows Home Server add-in, and developer Felix Kollmann has already started on initial ideas for Home Calendar, Tasks, Contacts (I hope it gets a new name too!). Work will continue on the add-in through to the end of the year at which point it will be released to the community.

With the winners announced, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who submitted an idea and voted along with the competition supporters below who have generously donated a heap of kit as prizes, which the guys above will receive in the coming weeks for their ingenuity. Finally, I’d like to thank Felix, Alex and Christoph over at HSB for inviting WGS to get involved in the competition – great collaborating with you guys and I hope we can do it again!

Until next year, that’s the Windows Home Server AIC ‘09 done and dusted!

How much longer before the Internet becomes our only avenue of communication?

Before I delve into future speculation, you might ask why would I think of such a question?  My wife and I were discussing our latest cable bill last night.  We had recently switched everything (cable, phone, Internet) to one company to get their “bundled” savings.  For on year, at least.  Next year, I will switch back to their competitor for another year of “bundled” new customer savings.  Why should I be a “loyal” customer when they try to screw me over once I am that “loyal” customer.  How much am I saving?  About $60 a month.  For one year.  Along with my cell phone bill (4 cell phones, no “smart phones”), I am spending over $3000 a YEAR.  Just to communicate with the outside world and watch television.

hmmm.  When I was a kid, my parents had a… phone bill.  Average of perhaps $20 a month.  For the convenience of take-it-with-you phone service, huge amounts of never-watched-channels, and digital TV, I get to pay 13 times more than my parents did.

Simply amazing.

Finally, back to my original question.  How do we interact with the outside world?  Not counting face-to-face communication.

• Postal service.  Does anyone send snail-mail anymore?  Long live Email, Instant Messaging, Personal Messaging, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.   Long live the Internet!
• Faxing.  Some of the younger audience may not even know what a fax (facsimile) is.  Replaced by word processor/Email and Photocopy/Email.  Again, long live the Internet!
• Land lines.  We have one.  Only because my wife does daycare.  No daycare would mean no land-line.  DSL from your phone company may be keeping land lines around…  for awhile yet.  The replacement?  Your cell phone.  Perhaps you call it your “smart” phone.  May not be quite the Internet yet, but the next ISP-of-choice may become your cell phone company.  It is happening right now.  The Internet is an integral part of your “smart” phone.  Smart phones means the end of personal computers.  Down the road a bit, but it is coming.  Long live the Internet!  Or maybe the “cell” phone.
• Television.  In the US, the big 3 are becoming less and less important.  They have already diversified into the cable offerings.  But for how long will OTA and/or cable “tele” last?  Internet TV is still in its infancy, quality-wise.  Give it a few more years and how relevant will cable be?  Long live the Internet!

Which leads us to…  the Internet.  Tomorrow’s Internet will all be wifi based.  And as I alluded to above, all “smart” phone based.  The end of the “traditional” PC is just around the corner, IMHO.  Netbook, meet “smart” phone.

Am I wrong?  You tell me.

Congratulations to the following awardees.

• Dave McCabe of the HomeServerShow fame.
• Nigel Wilks, moderator, add-in author, and wiki editor at MediaSmartServer.net.
• Alexander Kent, of HomeServerLand, and add-in author.
• Masahiko Sada, moderator of the Japanese WHS community forum.
• Masashi Shimizu, technical editor, and forum moderator.

Please join me in offering congratulations to the latest Windows Home Server MVP awardees.

Fixes:

• Accidental leftover debug code
• Installer problems
• Fixes WM client’s positioning code (hopefully)

Adds:

• MP3 streaming on the iPhone client – You’ll notice “[Play Album]” add the end of a folder listing where mp3s exist, and a new option when you select an mp3 file.
• WMA streaming for the Windows Mobile Client – Click preview when a WMA file is selected. Unfortunately, Mobile Windows Media Player doesn’t support streaming mp3s.

Whilst the add-in currently requires you to jailbreak you iPhone to use, a forthcoming authorised version will be made available in the Apple App Store for $0.99, which is great news.

More Info: WHS Mobile | Discuss | Rate this Add-in

At just 13W power consumption and 17dB noise output (and that’s just the hard drive – the PC itself is completely silent), the new model can serve as a great single-drive home server, media center, even a low-power desktop PC!

You have the choice of fitting  a 3.5″ or 2.5″ drive, so you could max the T3N out with a 2Tb drive, and 2Gb RAM to pack a real punch, and with a choice of chassis in Blue, Pink or the more conventional Black you can add a splash of colour into the room.

Connectivity options are reasonable, given the small foootprint, with 3 USB drives for additional storage and Gigabit Ethernet on board.

Full specs:

Unit dimension 210 (d) x 65 (h) x 240 (w)
Unit construction ABS outer shell, with SEC inner chassis
CPU 32 bit Intel Atom N270 (1 x 1.6GHz / 512KB L2 cache) with speed step – 533MHz FSB
Chipset Intel 82945GSE Northbridge + ICH7M Southbridge
Graphics Intel Extreme (GMA950)
Memory 1x DDR SO-DIMM 533/667MHz (up to 2GB) – 200 pin
HDD 1x 3.5″ (Green Power) or 1x 2.5″ SATA HDDs can be fitted
Expansion 1x Mini-PCI Express slot (for WiFi)
Internal expansion 1x SPDIF, 2+2 HD Audio, Front Mic/Headphone, 1x Parallel, 1x PS2, 2x RS232, 4x USB2.0 – LVDS
Colour options Black, Sparkle Blue or Sparkle Pink
Front panel Power switch and Power / HDD activity LEDs
Rear panel 12V DC power in / 3x USB2.0 / 10.100.1000 LAN (incl PXE Support) / Audio Out / VGA / DVI-D
Weight Base unit (nett) 2.1Kg
Power supply 60W External AC/DC included with country specific power cord
Working temp Maximum 40’C ambient
Mounting options Desk
Power consumption from 13W (base unit)
Acoustics 17dBA (incl 1x HDD) or 0dBA without HDD
Software As selected

Base pricing starts at £119 ex VAT with a range of specification options on offer.

More Info: Tranquil PC

Microsoft will be offering a variety of editions to serve consumer and business customers, and understanding what features are available in which edition can be difficult. I’d recommend you checking out Paul Thurrott and Ed Bott for more details and commentary on this.

For most average consumers, Windows 7 Home Premium is probably the sweet spot in terms of cost:features ratio, but if you’re a Windows Home Server owner, my advice is to plump for Windows 7 Professional, for one big reason – Remote Desktop.

Those of you currently running Windows XP Home or Windows Vista Home Premium may have tried to access and control those computers remotely using your home server, and found that you can’t. That’s because so called “consumer” versions of Windows cannot act as a “remote desktop host”. Hosting remote desktop connections is considered a “business-level” feature, and is only available in XP Pro (and, as a quirk, XP Tablet and Media Center editions which were built on the XP Pro platform) and Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate.

With regard to Windows 7, you’ll see that editions up to and including Windows 7 Home Premium cannot be accessed using a remote desktop connection, whilst Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate do have this feature enabled.

So if you’re in store or online, and you’re trying to figure out whether you should go for Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional, if you want to access that computer remotely using Windows Home Server, Go Pro. Professional has everything that’s available in Home Premium (including Windows Media Center) so don’t think you’re buying a dusty, boring, “business” version of Windows.

Microsoft are offering huge 50% discounts off upgrade prices until early July. Amazon has the details:

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade ($99)

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade ($49)