Like cats and dogs, confirmed Mac and PC believers have a few things in common. The USB port, for instance, is one. And both systems use electricity.
Now Hewlett-Packard, while not exactly playing matchmaker, has arranged a way to bring together both sides digitally, if not philosophically.
Home servers — devices that work mainly in the background — are part of a category that doesn’t resonate much with consumers, especially since the options for storing data have become so inexpensive and even fashionable . But H.P. is skewing its new home server, the MediaSmart, as one with a dual personality: it provides a centralized media storeroom — for photos, music, video, and more — for both Windows and Apple computers. And it’s priced not to break the bank, starting at about $600 for the 750-gigabyte version, and expandable to up to nine terabytes.
So what can a home server do?
* Centralize files from all your PCs at home, and provide access to those files over the Web from just about anywhere you can get to broadband via a wired connection;
* Provide a method for backing up data. In the case of the H.P. model, it automatically saves content on machines running Windows or Mac OS X Leopard’s integrated Time Machine system;
* Become a super-jukebox, distributing iTunes content all around the house;
* Push images, from H.P.’s Photo Publisher location, to sharing sites like Facebook or to your family and friends;
The MediaSmart is about 10 inches high, 5.5 inches wide and just over 9 inches deep. It will sit neatly in place of that old beige box on a desktop.
Source: gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com
Now Hewlett-Packard, while not exactly playing matchmaker, has arranged a way to bring together both sides digitally, if not philosophically.
Home servers — devices that work mainly in the background — are part of a category that doesn’t resonate much with consumers, especially since the options for storing data have become so inexpensive and even fashionable . But H.P. is skewing its new home server, the MediaSmart, as one with a dual personality: it provides a centralized media storeroom — for photos, music, video, and more — for both Windows and Apple computers. And it’s priced not to break the bank, starting at about $600 for the 750-gigabyte version, and expandable to up to nine terabytes.
So what can a home server do?
* Centralize files from all your PCs at home, and provide access to those files over the Web from just about anywhere you can get to broadband via a wired connection;
* Provide a method for backing up data. In the case of the H.P. model, it automatically saves content on machines running Windows or Mac OS X Leopard’s integrated Time Machine system;
* Become a super-jukebox, distributing iTunes content all around the house;
* Push images, from H.P.’s Photo Publisher location, to sharing sites like Facebook or to your family and friends;
The MediaSmart is about 10 inches high, 5.5 inches wide and just over 9 inches deep. It will sit neatly in place of that old beige box on a desktop.
Source: gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com
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