There are three primary purposes of Home Server:

Automated Computer Backup - Home Server will sit in the middle of your house and completely backup the entire hard drives of every computer connected to it, automatically. Lose anything, even an entire computer, and you will be able to restore it. You will even be able to restore older versions of files, taking advantage of a valuable feature in Windows Vista.

Access Everything From Anywhere - With a Home Server, you will be able to access all of your files from any computer, inside or outside your home, as well as accessing your home computers from outside the home. You will centrally store your files to make them easier to access at all times.

Grows With You - Home Server will be designed to make it easier for users to expand its capabilities, especially making it easy to add more hard drives. (http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007/01/07/exclusive-windows-home-server-in-detail/)

Could be of interest if it is truely plug and play. May be alot easier for non-tech to set one up.

If its even remotely plug and play, it would be very interesting.

Of course, the devil is in the details and quite frankly I just can't see MS pulling it off in its first try at it! I think MS is a great company but I do tend to go with the adage that you need to wait for MS Product version 3.0!

Yep ... I think you are right here. Also, all the DRM stuff that will be "built-in" should also be interesting.

But, if it could backup all your PC's easily and allow remote listening/viewing of your media, then it may be worth a shot.

At the very least, it is something to keep an eye on.

The worst part, it is a OEM-only product, according to ars (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070108-8573.html). Just like OCUR.
Although "a retail release of the OS isn't out of the question", it will probably be priced out of the DIY market initially.

Diogen.

It didn't take long...
According to this preview (http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whs_preview.asp):
"...Microsoft will make WHS available in two ways: Bundled with new WHS hardware and software-only, the latter so that enthusiasts can install the system on the hardware of their choice... If you're building your own home server, Microsoft requires a 1 GHz processor or better, 512 MB of RAM or more, and as many disks as you think you need. The company will support multiple home servers on the same network, but it's still murky how that will work."

Good news. Hopefully it doesn't cost and arm and a leg.

Diogen.

In a speech yesterday at WinHEC 2007 in Los Angeles, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates confirmed that users will be able to retrofit older PCs themselves with Windows Home Server (WHS) when it ships later this year. (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9019600)

This would be nice to see happen.

This sounds like another unneeded and unnecessary product designed to add to the MS bottom line at the expense of inexperienced customers. It's a typical MS marketing ploy. Cripple an existing product (WinXP/Vista) and then make customers pay for an upgrade or another copy of the O/S that isn't crippled.

Automated Computer Backup - Removed from Home versions of XP and Vista along with full networking capabilities. Much better third party products are available for about $40 anyway.

Access Everything From Anywhere - I thought networking already did that. Oops, I forgot they crippled "Home" versions of Windows. Who knows what DRM restrictions the built into Vista Home. Linux has always done this, even with Windows, despite MS's best efforts to make it incompatible.

Grows With You - It's difficult to expand computers with new hard drives? Maybe they should take a look at 2 of my systems with 4 and 5 hard drives, respectively. All files are accessible from the other systems as well.

Well, I for one am looking forward to it and I'd appreciate if we could keep this discussion on the product features and how it might be used rather than thread crapping.

Sorry. Couldn't help myself. It happens every time I see another canard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard) from MS. I am sure there are lots of people who can't wait for this to happen... "Home Server will sit in the middle of your house." ;)