14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has confirmed neither the price nor the availability date of Windows Home Server. Furthermore, the Redmond company denied that the product will be released on August 27, as previously reported. Joel Sider, the PR Manager for Home Server made it clear that the entry on the MSFT tech support website cannot be associated with a general availability date of Windows Home Server. The product formerly codenamed Quattro and Project Q was released to manufacturing to OEMs in July. And in this context, the ball is in the court of original equipment manufacturer as far as the availability dates and pricing are concerned.
"The [27 August] date refers to when tech support goes live for system builders. It is great to see that the system builder version has indeed made its way through the distribution channel in some markets. As most know, we released Home Server to manufacturing last month, handing if off to OEMs for their retail products and making the system builder version available to distributors worldwide. Distributors selling the system builder version determine their own schedules and pricing, of course. OEM products are still forthcoming," revealed Sider.
However, the first Microsoft partner to deliver Windows Home Server bundled with its own hardware is HP. And according to Amazon.com, Hewlett-Packard start selling two versions of HP MediaSmart Server preloaded with Windows Home Server beginning with September 15, 2007. HP EX470 MediaSmart Home Server (AMD Live/ 64 Bit Sempron Processor, 500 GB Hard Drive) and HP EX475 MediaSmart Home Server (AMD Live/ 64 Bit Sempron Processor, 1 TB Hard Drive) are the two HP servers that will be delivered for $596 and $745, respectively.
In this regard, Sider kept his initial promise that Windows Home Server bundled with OEM hardware will cost in the range of a low end PC. Additionally, a few websites world wide also managed to leak the price for the system builder version of Windows Home Server, via Bink. Windows Home Server will ship to system builder with a price tag of approximately $200.
