HP Announces New MediaSmart Home Servers For PCs And Macs

HP has announced the availability of its new home servers that can be used with both Windows and Mac computers – HP MediaSmart Server ex485 (with 750GB of hard disk storage) and HP MediaSmart Server ex487 (with 1.5TB), based on Microsoft Windows Home Server platform, centralizing digital media and files for easy sharing, backup, remote access and uploading to popular social media sites.

“A growing number of digital-savvy households have both Windows and Mac computers, with hundreds and sometimes thousands of media files and documents scattered across these devices,” said Jason Zajac, vice president of strategy, Worldwide Attach Group, HP. “The HP MediaSmart Server protects, stores and organizes this content from anywhere on a network so consumers can access and share it any place they are connected.”

Impressive features of HP MediaSmart Server ex485/ex487:

• HP Media Collector – Conveniently schedules the MediaSmart Server to copy and centralize digital files and libraries from networked PCs
• Media Streaming – Remotely streams photos and music to any Internet-connected PC or Mac
• Server for iTunes – Centralizes iTunes music libraries on the server for playback to any networked Mac or PC running iTunes
• HP Photo Publisher – Easily upload photos to Facebook, Picasa Web Albums and Snapfish
• HP Photo Viewer – Allows easy sharing of photos with friends and family
• PC Hard Drive Backup – Backs up networked PCs via the Windows Home Server backup feature
• Mac Hard Drive Backup – Backs up Macs running Leopard using Apple Time Machine software
• Server Backup – Duplicates designated shared folders to a separate hard disk drive
• Online Backup – Duplicates designated folders to Amazon’s S3 online backup service for an additional layer of protection
• Smart Power Management – Can schedule times for server to go to ‘sleep’ and ‘wake up’, saving on energy costs
• Processor – Intel Celeron, 2.0 GHz 64-bit. 2GB of 800-MHz DDR2 DRAM now standard on MediaSmart Server
• Expandability – Additional drives can be added for up to 9TB

“HP continues to innovate on the Windows Home Server platform giving consumers even more options to enjoy and protect their precious memories and valuable data,” said Charlie Kindel, general manager, Windows Server Solutions, Microsoft. “We believe consumers will embrace the new MediaSmart Server as one of the most exciting computing products for the home.”

The new HP MediaSmart Server ex485 and MediaSmart Server ex487 will hit the market by February 2009 for $599 and $749, respectively.