At the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates introduced a product that was until then extremely hush-hush, and referred to internally only as Project Q, or Project Quattro.

The brainchild of Charlie Kindel, Microsoft, Product Unit Manager, Quattro grew to become Windows Home Server, a server operating system aimed at home consumers. Windows Home Server is designed to integrate with hardware from original equipment manufacturers in order to deliver a home server aimed at household networks with capabilities ranging from backup to remote access. Windows Home Server was released to manufacturing in mid 2007 and was officially launched on November 5, 2007.

At the Macworld Conference & Expo 2008, Apple unveiled the Time Capsule, essentially, an appliance that is intimately connected with the Leopard operating system and the Time Machine feature offering automatic and wireless capabilities.

"Bring Time Capsule home, plug it in, click a few buttons on your Macs and voila-all the Macs in your house are being backed up automatically, every hour of every day. With Time Capsule and Time Machine, all your irreplaceable photos, movies and documents are automatically protected and incredibly easy to retrieve if they are ever lost," promised Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

But the Time Capsule is also designed to act as a central home hub, for households with multiple Mac computers, and a full-featured Wi-Fi base station featuring the 802.11n technology. The Time Capsule comes with a storage capacity of up to 1 TB and costs up to $499. Microsoft offers the same functionality with Windows Home Server, with the exception of the wireless connectivity. However, Windows Home Server will backup not only Windows Vista, but also Windows XP, and even the 32-bit versions of Windows running on Boot Camp, on Apple's Intel-based Macs.

And here are the features of Windows Home Server as enumerated by the Redmond company: "Your family's digital memories and media organized in one central hub; home PCs backed up daily, automatically; simple recovery of lost files or even entire PCs; complete access from networked PCs to all your Windows Home Server files; a personalized Web address for sharing your photos and home videos; easy and quick setup; expandable storage space for future use and innovative third-party applications."