The Digital Lifestyle Show 283 Angry Andrew

1. Great show.

2. Agreed…great show as usual. A couple of comments for Andrew regarding the whole WHS fiasco.

   First, in full disclosure, I use and love my HP EX475 and have encouraged many to adopt WHS technology. It basically works (nearly flawlessly) as advertised as a backup/monitoring mechanism for my 7 (soon to be 9) PCs,a central repository for all of my data/media files, as well as a source for streaming content to PCs and some other devices. In short, I'm a huge fan of the product/platform and have been similarly pleased with Drive Extender technology.

   That being said, after listening to your podcast and some of the very insightful commentary that you provided, I began thinking of what Microsoft's motivation might be (as well as HP's by association). I wanted to throw some possibilities out there to get your thoughts.

   1. In the big picture (meaning the masses, rather than enthusiasts), it appears that the world is moving toward a cloud-based existence. Music, movies, photos, and, in some cases PC-backup. Similarly, it also appears that many recent developments target/adopted widely to/by the mass market are geared toward consuming media. I personally don't care to upload content that I own to/from the cloud, but can appreciate that for many, streaming netflix, itunes, etc…seems/is a lot less daunting than the idea of buying/configuring/maintaining a "server". I would suspect that the adoption rate of cloud-based solutions is increasing more rapidly than that of introducing a server into the home. So I guess I can't blame MS for somewhat de-emphasizing a relatively low growth technology.

   2. Also, to be clear, I would suspect that the vast majority of storage utilized by home users is media of some type. The point being the home users to which this product is targeted are also the universe of users that probably have the highest migration rate to cloud-based solutions. I would put myself in a small minority of home users who have actually gone "paperless" (business documents, bills, receipts, product manuals, etc.) and, even for me, the amount of storage that is dedicated on my network to non-media is miniscule. So, again, looking forward the need for home users to have the ability to add/expand storage (ostensibly for media) will decline with the acceptance of cloud-based solutions. I would venture to guess that 95+% of users could store all of their non-video data/media on a single 2TB drive or less–thus reducing the true need for DE technology in the future cloud-based world. I certainly fall into this category.

   3. I understand and share the frustration that Microsoft have suggested that customer feedback fueled their decision to remove drive extender. Perhaps the "feedback" they are referring to is the number of WHS packages sold. The public has had almost 4yrs to "vote" with their wallets on this technology and perhaps MS tallied these votes. Again, to be clear, I personally share the belief that WHS has been one of the most poorly-marketed technologies ever—but my ability to convince friends that they "need" one has not been wildly successful either.

   4. MS say they will go forward with "Vail" without DE with the support of a group of unnamed partners. My take on this is that this opens the door for MS to subsequently say that they have decided to kill the whole WHS category once "partners" stop supporting it. As you mentioned in the podcast, it doesn't take a great amount of imagination to see partners cease to support the platform w/o DE technology when considering the obvious reduced appetite for Vail w/o DE among even the most ardent WHS fans and the additional burden they will have to bear to incorporate/support DE alternatives.

   5. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the following, but from my standpoint (I'd categorize myself as a "newbie enthusiast", if there is such a thing)—the upgrade path from v1 to Vail was going to be somewhat less than "painless" for a number of users. Perhaps the fact that highlighted that DE technology couldn't be directly ported from v1 to Vail would've meant: a)some users wouldn't upgrade due to being intimidated by a non "plug-n-play" upgrade process, b)huge support costs helping non-intimidated users who screw it up, c)users who put-off upgrading until they HAD to–which pushes the expected revenue stream from Vail further out into the future and, more importantly, further along the cloud acceptance curve.

   6. It appears that the model being "pushed" out to the public for consuming media at home is a non-traditional PC model. I would suspect that many users have 1 or 2 "places" where they need traditional PCs for completing "traditional tasks" (spreadsheets, quicken, word-processing, etc.). Many other PCs that people own are used primarily for media, e-mail and social-networking. Other devices are addressing this market. Things like smartphones, iPads, Roku boxes, Boxee, Xbox360 and others, don't really benefit from having a WHS in a world where cloud-based content can be delivered reliably (like netflix). Further, these devices don't typically need to be "backed up" (or at least only a small amount of data's worth). So I would guess that going forward, many households will choose to add these types of devices rather than adding to the number of PCs in the house—thus reducing the necessity/relevance of WHS.

   In closing, to be clear, I personally like the WHS model whereby I have 300+ DVD/BD backed up to the server, 30+GB of my own CDs, my photos and home videos all accessibly from my 7 PCs. I am wary and reticent to migrate to cloud-based solutions. But I must say that I feel that I am in the minority of people who want/need this capability in my house and even less in the minority of people who will want/need it in 5yrs. So, put differently, if I learned that MS was going to invest large sums of $$ in furthering development of the WHS platform, I'd probably look to sell the stock.

   Great podcast and insight as always and I look forward to hearing more of your well-informed, insightful views.

   • Hi Byron

     Thanks for the comment and the great feedback.

     Regarding the upgrade path – to be honest, it wasnt, and still isnt going to be an easy one. There will be no chance of just upgrading because V1 is 32bit and V2 is 64bit.

     The only way would be to sort of multi stage process where you copy data off, upgrade and copy data back.

     But that means you will need spare drives of the same size or more than the data you already have!

     Also, I suspect it will be left up to the OEM to provide this support – so in the case of HP MediaSmart owners that isnt going to happen!

     Andrew

     • thanks….that's what I'd suspected/feared. So that bolsters my point that the difficulty in upgrading would likely result in a fairly low upgrade rate within their target market (everyday home users) teamed with the same difficulty in marketing any version of the product in the first place.

       As much as it pains me, and I hope that I'm wrong, it seems like WHS is likely on its deathbed (as many have predicted).

       🙁

       • I think from an OEM perspective that DONT want you to upgrade, they would want you to buy new hardware, but that still doesnt solve the data migration issue easily.

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