In a strange move, Acer is not showing their Acer RevoCenter Windows Home Server 2011 server at IFA!
IFA is Europe’s largest Consumer Electronics Show, and as you have seen here on UWHS many companies show off their new and future gadgets and hardware. Back in April we told you about Acer’s new WHS 2011 box, and then everything went quiet. Then last week we told you that Microsoft have blogged that it was coming very soon.
What I thought was strange was that WHS 2011 has been out for quiet a while now without any real OEM support from the “big” players apart from the initial announcement followed by a huge silence. Then months later, after Microsoft dropped the price of WHS 2011 to System Builders, suddenly there is another announcement saying its coming soon, but again no real concrete information.
No worries I thought, Acer have a huge area at IFA and they are bound to be showing off this new box, and there in the corner of the booth I spotted it, or at least I thought so. It said RevoCenter on the card in front.
It turned out to be Acer’s original WHS version 1 box, which is a few years old now! When I asked where the new box was I was told they were waiting on the version of WHS, which the guy couldn’t remember what it was called but it began with a V! When I said Vail, he said yes, they were waiting for Vail to be released before they were going to start shipping. When I told him that Vail was WHS 2011, and it had been out for months now he seemed surprised. I even asked him about the Microsoft announcement and he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. Now to be fair on him, not everyone working on the booth will know everything about the product release schedule, but you would think he would know about this given it was the area of the booth he was working, and he certainly knew about WHS V1!
So I am very confused. Why bring a really old product to IFA and not bother to bring your new one, even after Microsoft “announced” it publicly only a week before?
Does this mean that Acer’s WHS 2011 box isn’t quite as ready as Microsoft would lead us to believe?
