Windows Home Server is certainly going to be a highlight for Microsoft in the home-user department. It’s going to be based loosely on Windows Vista but with some server addition’s thrown in which make it easier for the standard home user to administrate and sort out their files and networking.

It’s not clear however whether Windows Live Drive will have anything to do with Windows Home Server or not. What we’ve managed to establish so far:

• Windows Home Server will be released sometime this year as a product for home users to centralize their files, media and folders.
• Storage will be easily expandable so you can have gigabytes, terabytes and even petabytes of storage as long as your hardware supports it.
• You’ll be able to access your files from anywhere on the web.
• Windows Home Server will be an operating system similar to Windows Vista and not so similar to Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server “Longhorn”.
• Windows Live will be involved in making remote access possible.
• Server backups will be optional but installed as standard, and each file will be backed up incrementally online saving your bandwidth and online storage space*

* This is being said very carefully - don’t be surprised if this isn’t quite the case. Having a backup is important, but having a backup of a server stored on the server isn’t a wise idea as if the hard drive fails then you’ve lost everything as well as your backup… so this is mearly a good guess.

However it is indicated that “centralized storage” does in fact mean Windows Live Drive as the key statement is that “And you’ll probably never need to utter the words, “It’s not on this computer,” ever again” which is interesting, but whether an online or offline solution is given, it’ll be so much easier to manage your files and folders. This is because certain file types such as images or videos will be seperated so they’ll either be in the “Images” or “Videos” section but with the power of search and the possible remnents of WinFS, tags will be involved to keep everything together and linked in with each other. The chances are with this, it’ll be an online solution rather than an offline one, but that’s my opinion.

Another something which points me to Windows Live Drive having something to do with this is that you’ll be able to access your files from anywhere on the web. Microsoft hasn’t, as far as we can tell, worked on any projects which allow you to remotely access your computer since Terminal Services so I honestly think that an online web-based solution is key to this.

It seems that Zack over at MSBLOG made some pretty profound statements about this a week or so ago - he got the Windows Live Drive information rather muddled up, but give him credit he made the break in news about Windows Home Server before anyone else did. As quoted on another site:

“Zack has also confirmed Windows Server Home, while saying that it may or may not be revealed at CES (probably depending on time of the presentation and how close the product is to shipping). Server Home, or whatever it ends up being called, looks like a huge product, one that will make it possible to have an out-of-the-box centralized server experience in the home.”

Little mixed about what was said, and it’s not clear whether beta testers will be able to have a crack at testing Windows Live Drive and/or the Windows Home Server product, but we’ll surely update you if anything comes up.

If you’ve noticed http://home.live.com/, yes it goes to the main Windows Live homepage, but I believe that this will eventually be something to do with Windows Home Server. Whether this will be a web application to allow you to access your Windows Home Server machine or whether it’ll have some access to your Windows Live Drive, I don’t know but http://home.live.com/ hasn’t been active for very long, at the most a few weeks, not long enough to be inconspicuously for the Live.com homepage.

Note however, Windows Live Home is a name given by us at liveandbeyond.com to take note that a Windows Live product or service will be provided to link in with your Windows Home Server. Details are sketchy and not 100% accurate, so until they are backed up then we’ll keep hold of it so we don’t raise false hopes.

So what do you think - give us your honest opinions on whether Windows Home Server will be a big hit or a flop? Will you use it? Do you know something we don’t know? Leave a comment and let us know.