MaximumPC 2002 09

HP

MediaSmart

EX487

Back up every machine

in your home and

stream your media to

any room

T

here’s a lot to be excited about when

you consider the features Windows

Home Server offers out of the box—

primarily, automated backup of all your

desktop and mobile machines and media

streaming to every room in your house. HP

builds on this goodness with a second-

generation WHS product that boasts both

improved hardware and a supercharged

features list.

When we reviewed HP’s fi rst foray into

the world of Windows Home Server last

year, we were optimistic about the future

of the platform but a bit underwhelmed

by the performance of the little box. Since

then, the Home Server soft ware has gone

through some teething pains, including

a horrifi c bug that corrupted users’ fi les

(since corrected with the fi rst Service Pack

for the Home Server soft ware).

To the base that Windows Home Server

provides, HP has added a ton of powerful

new features, including a much-improved

media streamer; an iTunes streaming

server; the ability to back up OS X–based

machines using Time Machine; online back-

up for crucial fi les; integration with photo-

sharing services, including Picasa, Flickr,

and Facebook; and the HP Media Collector,

which scans your client computers and

automatically copies new photos, music, or

videos to the Home Server. Typically, we’re

not fans of the heavily customized shov-

elware that comes with OEM hardware,

but in this instance, HP has added genuine

value to the Home Server platform with

these soft ware enhancements. The Media

Collector is especially valuable because it

pulls photos from our client machines to

the server automatically—a huge benefi t,

and one that’s not built into the core Win-

dows Home Server functionality.

On the hardware front, the EX487

features a beefier configuration than the

first-gen MediaSmart. Instead of an AMD

Turion processor, 512MB of RAM, and a

pair of 500GB drives, the new hardware

boasts a 2GHz single-core Intel Celeron

paired with 2GB of RAM and a pair of

750GB drives. There are two bays in the

EX487 free for expansion, in addition

to an eSATA port and four USB ports.

Despite the beefier hardware, the machine

remains very quiet. It was inaudible in a

typical living room environment.

While this isn’t enough of an advance

to consider it a sophomore effort, it’s

definitely spring semester of freshman

year, and things are looking pretty good

for Home Server. – W I L L S M I T H

HP’s second-gen Home

Server looks like the

original, but inside are

four hot-swappable SATA

bays, a 2GHz Celeron, and

2GB of RAM.

86 | MAXIMUMPC | FEB 09 | http://www.maximumpc.com

IN THE LAB^

REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

+ -

VERDICT

$800, http://www.hp.com

9

Better hardware,

corruption issues are

fixed, and the HP add-

ons are kick ass.

We’d like a multicore

edition to empower

video-streaming apps

like TVersity.

HOME ALONE

HP MEDIASMART EX487

HOME ALONE 2

Best scores are bolded. To measure home server transfer speeds, we copy a 1,705MB H.264-encoded video fi le from a desktop machine hard-

wired to the server and back using the Windows browser.

MediaSmart MediaSmart

EX487 EX475

Upload Transfer 47.4 43.0

Rate (MB/s)

Download Transfer 65.6 40.5

Rate (MB/s)

BENCHMARKS