I had a brief opportunity to drop by the HP booth at CES 2009 to check out the latest HP Windows Home Server product – the MediaSmart Server EX485/487. On the outside, the new server looks very much like the first generation EX470/475 server, but things are definitely a bit different on the inside.

First up, the hardware has been upgraded on the EX485. Gone is the AMD Sempron processor and in is the Intel Celeron 2 GHz 64 bit processor. Other upgrades include 2GB of DDR2 RAM, and upgrades to hard drive capacities. The EX485 comes with a single 750GB SATA 7200RPM HDD while the EX487 comes with dual 750GB SATA 7200RPM HDDs. The unit still has four drive bays and you still get four USB 2.0 ports and a single eSATA port (would have been nice if they expanded this option). Form factor wise, the system still has the same measurements as the first generation model.

Now on the software side, the key feature list now includes:

• HP Media Collector – services that schedules the MediaSmart server to copy and centralize digital files and libraries from networked PCs
• Media Streaming – remotely stream photos and music to any Internet-connected PC or Mac
• iTunes Server – centralize iTunes music libraries on the server for playback to any networked Mac or PC running iTunes
• HP Photo Publisher – upload photos to Facebook, Picasa, and Snapfish
• HP Photo Viewer – allows easy sharing of photos with friends and family
• Backup both PCs and Macs. Now supports Apple’s 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 additional layer of protection
• Smart Power Management can schedule time for server to go to “sleep” or “wake up” to save on energy costs
• Max of 9 TB

Here’s a picture of a Mac desktop running Time Machine against the Home Server.

The EX485 with 750GB of disk space will be available for $599 while the EX487 with 1.5TB will be available for $749.

My take – get the EX485 and then add hard drives as you need them. Getting a 1TB disk drive from a third party vendor is cheaper than buying the 1.5TB system from HP.

If you’re like me – you’re probably wondering whether some of these new software features will be backported to the EX470/475 line – the answer is for the most part no. The Apple Mac Backup support will be coming to the EX470/475 but the Media Collector and Remote Media Streaming support will not be available.

[Check it out]

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