Hewlett-Packard, the worldwide leading vendor of personal computer systems, has just introduced two new products, part of the company's MediaSmart range of home servers. The two new home servers, ex485 and ex487, have been designed to provide PC users with an alternative storage solution for all of their media-related files, such as music, photos or home videos. They are based on Microsoft's Windows Home Server platform and have been specifically designed to provide support to both PC and Mac users.

A quick look at the specifications of the two new network media storage servers will reveal an Intel Celeron processor clocked at 2GHz, which, combined with 2GB of DDR2 RAM memory, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 2.0 ports and one eSATA connector, should provide a high-performance alternative to home storage servers. Users will be able to benefit from up to four hard disk drive bays, which will consequently enable them to take advantage of no less than 9TB of storage space, probably enough to handle even the largest media libraries.

Additional features that have been built inside include the company's Media Collector, Photo Publisher, Photo Viewer and the all necessary PC and Mac Hard drive backup functionalities. Among some of the things that users are likely to appreciate, the Media Streaming feature is probably the most impressive, as it allows one to remotely stream photos and music to any PC or Mac computer system that has a working Internet connection.

As for pricing and availability, the HP MediaSmart Server ex485 has been designed to provide a standard storage space of 750GB and is expected to cost around $599, while the ex487 model comes with a larger standard storage space, at 1.5TB, a feature that will also take the price tag all the way to $749. The two MediaSmart Servers are expected to become available for pre-ordering starting January 5, 2009.