14 DAY TRIAL // Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett-Packard announced today a number of new products, including the new ENVY laptops, the Mini 311 netbook, powered by NVIDIA's ION, the Pavilion dm3 and ProBook 5310m laptops and also the new Pavilion MS200 all-in-one desktop PC. However, the company appears to be on a roll with new product announcements, as the PC vendor also announced the introduction of its new MediaSmart EX490 and EX495 home servers, both of which have been featured with Microsoft's Windows Home Server operating system.
“The new release of HP MediaSmart Server software and hardware continues HP's leadership in building compelling functionality on top of the Microsoft Windows Home Server platform,” Russ Madlener, director, Solutions Marketing, Microsoft, said. “HP is delivering a true cross-platform product by adding the ability to administer the server from a Mac using Microsoft's new Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.”
The new systems have been built on Intel's latest processors, with the EX490 boasting an Intel Celeron processor, while the EX495 comes with a slightly better Intel Pentium Dual-Core CPU. Additional hardware specifications include the 2GB of RAM, the Gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 2.0 connectors and an eSATA port that can be used to add more storage to the media server. As far as storage is concerned, the EX490 is featured with 1TB of space, while the slightly larger EX495 offers 1.5TB of space for the user's media files.
Among some of the things that can be done using the new MediaSmart EX490 and EX495 media servers from HP, the company highlighted the automatic backup for both PCs and Macs and the capability to stream music, photos and videos to various computers, TVs and gaming consoles. The two solutions are expected to start shipping next month, like most of the products HP launched today, with a price tag of US$550 for the EX490 model and of US$700 for the EX495 version.