When the first wave of rainbow-colored iMacs came out many years ago, I imagined deploying a fleet of them—one in each room, all networked together. I certainly wasn't cut out to be a network administrator. I just wanted to have all my music available wherever I was.

Cost, among other things, derailed that grand plan. But the notion remained in the back of my mind. Well, after using the new Windows Home Server for the past 5 months, I can finally say I've realized that dream.

Here's where you ask, “A server? For your home?”

My answer is a resounding yes, and it’s not as complicated as it sounds.

A server is really just another computer—with a whole bunch of storage space and the ability to dish out files or centralize services like printing among multiple machines. Sure, I use Windows Home Server to share music with all of the other computers in my house. But that's not all. Home Server also automatically backs up all the computers on my network and keeps their files synchronized (something neither Windows XP nor Vista can do on its own).

Oh, and did I mention that I can access all of my files remotely over the Internet?

Actually, the most surprising thing to me is how much mileage I'm getting out of everything that Windows Home Server does. I've never been one to religiously back up my computers, but Windows Home Server does it automatically. This safety net has already bailed me out of one bad situation.

And it's really cool to be able to access files on my server from anywhere I can get an Internet connection. The other day at work I wanted to play a song for a co-worker, so I logged onto my server and downloaded it. Try doing that without having to mess with your firewall settings. Home Server made it easy and painless.

Since Windows Home Server is a platform, there's also all kinds of add-ins available. One of the coolest I use automatically uploads pictures from my server to my Flickr account. With an active toddler at home and grandparents, aunts, and uncles scattered across the country, it's a great way for everyone to keep in touch. (Despite its power and versatility, Windows Home Server was designed to have push-button simplicity, as you can see from the following screenshot.)

How do you get Windows Home Server? The easiest way is to buy it preinstalled on a computer.  Hewlett-Packard will soon release its eagerly-anticipated MediaSmart Server. Other computer makers are expected to follow.

If you’re a do-it-yourself type like me, you can also buy a stand-alone copy of Windows Home Server and install it on either a new computer or an older one you want to repurpose (the hardware requirements for Home Server are surprisingly modest).  But there's one big drawback to the DIY approach: you don't get any technical support. So if you're not comfortable working under the hood of your PC, buying a Windows Home Server-powered computer from HP or somebody else probably makes more sense.

Want to see Windows Home Server in action? In November, Microsoft and HP are jointly sponsoring a series of free online seminars to show off Windows Home Server and HP’s new MediaSmart Server. The first webcast is Nov. 8. Register here.

<Mark Carpenter>

Ed. note: Two other great sources of news and tips about Home Server are the Windows Home Server blog, which has surprisingly non-techie dispatches by the folks at Microsoft who created the software, and We Got Served, one of the most comprehensive Home Server enthusiast sites on the Internet.

Update 11/04: Microsoft announced today that Windows Home Server will now be available from more retailers and that a slew of new Home Server-powered devices are on the way.

I’m a creature of habit. I’ve got thousands of songs in my Windows Media Player library, but I often end up listening to just a handful of tunes over and over again. When I need a nudge out of my musical rut, I head over to MSN Radio for a bit of sonic serendipity.

Earlier this year MSN Radio hooked up with Pandora to bring its music discovery service to the masses. If you aren’t familiar with Pandora, it’s a commercial-free Internet radio service that’s super smart: Type in a song or artist that you like, and Pandora creates a custom radio station featuring songs with similar “musical DNA.” It’s quite uncanny.

As a test, I typed in the influential, but little-known artist “Jah Wobble” and got a station that included a great selection of downtempo, dub-inspired songs by Wobble and similar artists I’m familiar with, such as Dub Syndicate and Bill Laswell. 

But my custom station also included an interesting mix of tunes from bands I’d never heard of before, including San Francisco-based Sizemix and Vienna-based dZihan & Kamien. Nice.

Last month, MSN Radio added three new tabs to its Pandora-powered service to make it even easier for new listeners to use:

• Editor’s Picks. This tab lets you get your groove on right away. Just click one of the eclectic stations created by Pandora’s own music mavens. The instrumental funk station “Pass the Peas” even managed to shake me from my stupor late in the work day. 
• Artist Radio. If you’d rather be the boss, this tab helps you build your own station in flash. Just click the name of one of the featured artists, such as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club or Crowded House, and you’re off and running.
• Genre Radio. Rather base your station on a genre, such as “Electric Blues” or “Club/Dance,” instead of an artist? Use this tab to pick one from a short list.

The next time you find yourself in the mood for something new, give MSN Radio a try and see what you think. I’ve been singing its praises to all my friends for quite some time. I even added the MSN Radio gadget to my fledgling Windows Live space recently to let the rest of the world know.

<John Shaw>

Update 11/04: As the writer from Australia points out, licensing restrictions prevent Pandora from operating in many countries outside the U.S.  I discovered this myself on a recent trip to Japan, where the service also doesn't work. <M.S.>

I sold all of my furniture in 24 hours.

No, I wasn’t about to travel the world by backpack. I hadn’t vowed to eschew materialism, either. I simply wanted to replace my older, just-out-of-college belongings with slightly more higher-end wares that reflect my current tastes and incorporated some of my husband’s style too.

So one Saturday afternoon recently, we picked out living room, dining room and bedroom suites from the catalogue of one of our favorite stores. “I’ll order it on Monday,” I told him. And then I surfed to Windows Live Expo and began posting for-sale ads.

Expo was super-easy to use: I just logged on using my Windows Live ID , clicked “Post a listing,” and followed the instructions for writing descriptions and uploading photos.

The next morning I woke up and checked my e-mail: a slew of responses! I figured my new furniture would be arriving on Monday or Tuesday, so I’d priced my old stuff insanely low to unload fast. I spent Sunday sending people directions to my house with Live Search, collecting cash, and waving a fond adieu to my old furniture. One person’s trash is another’s treasure.

I made a few hundred bucks off the would-be trash, kept perfectly good things out of the landfill, and made bargain-hunters happy. There was only one glitch in my plan: On Monday morning I found out that the new things I wanted to order had to be shipped from an out-of-state warehouse—a ten-day wait.

Oops.

I’m really glad I had Expo to make some money and get rid of things I didn’t need. However, I still owe my husband a few back massages to make up for the week-and-a-half we had to sleep on the floor.

<Jean White>

How much time did you spend stuck in traffic this morning?

If you've lost count, check out the interesting review in today's New York Times of a new auto GPS navigation system called Dash Express. What makes it different from all the other GPS devices out there—including the Garmin Nuvi I own—is that Dash is designed to feed information about traffic tie-ups and road conditions back to the Dash network.

This data is then rebroadcast back to each Express to give drivers an accurate estimate of how long it's going to take them to go from point A to point B on a particular road. The unit can also show alternative routes with their respective travel times. I mean, seriously: How cool is that?  

Traffic here in Seattle stinks. And it's not much better in other big cities. Of course, the utility of the device hinges on how many people on the road use it. And, at the moment, the answer is barely any, since Dash is still in the pre-release testing phase. Still, it offers an interesting glimpse of what the future of driving might look like. I plan to watch this one closely.

I'm unabashedly in love with my Garmin, even without real-time traffic info. After my computer, it's probably the most life-changing piece of technology I've ever bought. GPS has almost completely erased the stress of driving on unfamiliar streets or finding a store or house I've never been to. The number of arguments I have with my wife has also plunged.

At least in the car.

<Michael Stroh>

Until recently I didn't really have much need for a webcam. But then my wife decided to visit her parents in Japan and take the kids.

 For a month. 

Okay, sure. Part of me was secretly looking forward to having a little time to myself. After seeing everybody off at the airport a few weeks ago, I made a beeline to the closest movie theater showing Superbad ("McLovin!").

But all that changed the first day I came home from work to an empty apartment. Yoshi, my 3-year-old, didn't barrel up to greet me. Little Maya's 100-watt grin was nowhere in sight. No screaming, no chaos.

Suddenly, a webcam didn't seem like such a bad idea.

I had suspected this might happen, so I had picked up a pair of Microsoft LifeCams and tucked one in my wife's suitcase before she and the kids left. The other I installed on the PC in my home office. (The only hiccup: The installation disc lacked a new driver for Windows Vista, forcing me to the company website to fetch it.) Then I installed Windows Live Messenger. My wife repeated the same steps on a laptop in her parent's house, in a small former mining town in southern Japan.

Messenger, I discovered, is useful to have even if you never send instant messages. You can also use it to share files, make phone calls and hold video conferences, which we've been doing almost every day. To call my family, all I have to do is hit the Video Call button as soon as my wife and I are both logged in. She hears a brrring like an old-fashioned phone and then clicks Answer. You can see the results below. That's me there (love the hair?) strumming a few chords for my rocker-in-training Yoshi, who prefers AC/DC DVDs to Disney or Sesame Street. 

The audio and video quality of our calls varies wildly depending on Internet traffic and whether my PC is grinding away on some other task.  But it's good enough that I now prefer a Messenger video conference to a phone call (another plus: no international phone bills!).  Because Messenger also shares files easily, my wife can send short videos and digital snapshots of the kids she's been taking while we're apart.

Our little experiment has gone so well that I'm now planning to encourage my dad, who lives on the East coast, to set up a webcam.  I grew up surrounded by grandparents. My kids, unfortunately, don't have that luxury. It's nice that technology can bring everybody a little closer.

<Michael Stroh>

“So, how did you two meet, anyway?” My husband asked me as we left the wedding reception of my good friend, Susan. My response surprised him.

“We met online.”

No, I wasn’t scoping out personals sites looking for friends. This was even more random than that. I wanted to sell my vintage Yamaha motorcycle, so I posted an ad on Windows Live Expo.

Windows Live Expo is an online marketplace where you can search for things by category, price, and locale. You can make your ad visible to everyone—or specific people, such as your Messenger contacts or your coworkers. Best of all, it’s free.

I got a great response to my ad—lots of callers, a few lookers, and one serious buyer: Susan. We talked about bikes and traveling and our schooling and where we lived, and the next thing you know, we were making plans for a group ride.

First, I had to buy another motorcycle. So I turned to Expo and found a great bike—a Suzuki GS500. The seller turned out to be a great person, too. We exchanged numbers so we could meet for happy hour, art walks, and various random events in the Seattle area.

I’ve since bought and sold other bikes through Expo—a Yamaha R1, a Kawasaki ZX6-R (that's me on it there). These transactions affected my life in random, unexpected ways. One led me to a great local sushi place, another to my chiropractor.

Now, I’m not recommending people to get together with online strangers willy-nilly. However, sometimes, in the online travels that we take, we meet great people who end up becoming “real life” friends. It’s funny how some people say that technology has isolated us. I’ve found the opposite to be true. Through technology, I’ve met a bunch of great people whom I would otherwise never have met.

Happy riding and keep the rubber side down!

<Jean White>

Last Tuesday night I received a phone call from my brother. I’d barely said hello before he blurted out one of the most feared phrases in the English language—at least in my family:

“I think there’s something wrong with my computer.”

Immediately, my eye began to twitch. The last time my brother uttered that sentence, I spent four hours trying to update his old antivirus software, logged another three on the phone with the Geek Squad (including a technician who referred to himself as "Agent Sanders"), and racked up three more erasing his hard drive and re-installing all his software. It’s an incident my family now refers to as the Great Computer Fiasco of ’06 (not to be confused with its predecessors, the Great Computer Fiascos of ’04 and ’03, respectively).

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, doing my best not to panic.

“Well, I opened this e-mail…” he began, and then launched into a convoluted narrative involving mistaken e-mail identity, random pop-up ads, spam, and other suspicious computer behavior.

This explanation wasn’t exactly reassuring.

After making sure my brother hadn’t pounded on the computer with his fist in frustration (that’s how the Great Computer Fiasco of ’03 got started), I sent him off with detailed instructions on updating his antivirus software and manually removing malicious software from his hard drive.  He reported back the next night that neither of those options had worked, so I prepared to launch an offensive.

But after almost a week of failed efforts to download various updates and tools, a futile attempt at running System Restore, and lots of jokes about the dangers of "digitally transmitted diseases," I was forced to admit defeat: Whatever spyware, worm, or virus my brother's PC managed to contract wasn’t going away.

So last weekend, I talked him through wiping the hard drive on his poor, long-suffering computer. Again.

Rest in peace, PC. 

So ends the Great Computer Fiasco of ’07. I don’t think I have to tell you who’s going to be receiving a subscription to Windows Live OneCare this holiday season.

<Brittany Knight>

Are we entering the era of the throwaway music player?

I thought about this recently when Sandisk announced its new Sansa Clip. This diminutive portable music player (pictured below) has a screen that displays four lines of information, holds 1GB of music—and yet costs just $40. A 2GB version sells for twenty bucks more.

I wouldn’t throw away a device that costs $40 or $60 after just a few listens. But if it broke after a few months, I wouldn’t get too upset about it either. And if a better player soon came along, I wouldn’t feel bad about buying it.

A few months ago, I paid $60 for another Sansa player, the Express. It has only 1GB of storage. Now I’m thinking of ditching my Express for a Clip. So, in a sense, it is “disposable." Although I would never actually throw it away as long as it still works. I’ll probably find a friend who wants it [Ed. note: I'll take it, John!].

The new Sansa Clip comes with a built-in clip on the back (hence the name) so you can wear it while walking or running. The screen on the Clip is still tiny, but at least it has a screen. Some players in that price range, such as the $79 Apple iPod Shuffle, don't.

My old Express feels a bit cheap. But then again, it is cheap—or perhaps I should say inexpensive. Still, it's about the size of a USB flash drive and gets the job done: I can sync MP3 files and copy-protected music to the Express with my Rhapsody subscription.

I don’t care if my little Express player gets lost, broken, or rained on. And because I live in the Seattle area and run every morning, I spend a lot of time getting wet! I’m surprised the Express still works after all that rain and sweat.

I also have a $200 portable music player with a much better screen. But it doesn't have what I like to call WAF—Wife Acceptance Factor. That’s maybe the best part about this new disposable era we’re entering. If a $60 charge appears on my Visa, my wife might ask what it’s for, but it won’t spark a big discussion about why I bought yet another tech toy I don’t really need.

A $200 charge, on the other hand—now that requires some lobbying.

<John Swenson>

One of the perks of Windows Vista Ultimate is "Ultimate Extras," an eclectic collection of tools, language add-ons, and other exclusive goodies not available in any other Vista edition.

By far, the most popular and eye-popping of the lot is DreamScene.  DreamScene animates your Windows desktop. Rather than a static snapshot of your girlfriend or toothy-grinned toddler, you can have a burbling waterfall or a spinning planet on your screen. 

Sure, DreamScene isn't going to crunch your IRS 1040 or write your next school paper, but it is going to make your PC look cooler than anybody else's. In my book, that counts for something.

Last week, Vista got even dreamier. Microsoft released the Windows DreamScene Content Pack, which adds four new animated wallpapers to the four already included with Vista Ultimate. Meanwhile, a company called Stardock, which makes software for redecorating Windows, released a free program called DeskScapes.  DeskScapes extends the abilities of DreamScene, opening the door to all kinds of wild-looking animated wallpapers. 

I've been playing around with both enhancements for the past few days.  Here's a little video of my desktop to show you what's possible.

The first three examples you'll see are DreamScenes, the last three are DeskScapes.  (The Matrix-inspired one is my current favorite.) You can find these DeskScapes and dozens more for download on Stardock's new Dream website. (If the animations seem a little jittery, it's not your eyes or your computer—it's mine. The software I used to create the demo, Camtasia Studio, proved too much for my low-end home PC.  When Camtasia wasn't recording, the animations played silky smooth.)

Sold?  Then first you need to make sure you have the new DreamScene release, which you can get through Windows Update. (Click the Start button , then All Programs, and then click Windows Update.)  One you've installed it, check Update again and you should then see the new DreamScene Content Pack listed as a download option.

Brandon LeBlanc of Microsoft's Windows Experience blog has also posted a nice first look at the new DreamScenes and how to install them. I'll be sure to mention other noteworthy new Ultimate Extras that come along. You can also keep an eye on either the Windows Vista Ultimate website or the official Windows Vista blog for the latest news.

<Michael Stroh>

I upgraded my work computer to Windows Vista as soon as I could. And since I work as an editor at Microsoft, that made perfect sense.

But until last week, my home computer was still running Windows XP. I thought XP was good enough, so I made upgrading my lowest priority. My dog, my dinner and a lot of other things come first when I get home every day.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was switching back and forth whenever I went from home to work. It was like driving two different cars: both had everything I needed, but all the bells and whistles were in different places. I kept turning on the wipers when I meant to signal, or I’d reach for the clutch even though I was driving an automatic.

So last week I went to the store to pick up Windows Vista Ultimate and Microsoft Office 2007. Of course, I decided to do my shopping on the day Halo 3  went on sale (hey, I’ve never been one to time things well). Fortunately, I found a brief lull in the madness and grabbed the software. I also bought a toddler-sized T-shirt for my new nephew. It says: “future developer.” Never hurts to plant the seed early! But I digress.

It was interesting to be in your shoes as I upgraded my home computer. I edit how-to articles about Vista—including upgrading—all the time, but I rarely have to actually do it.

It took awhile to upgrade, mainly because I had to dig up a few hardware drivers. I even ended up reading a few of the Help topics I edited earlier in the year. Even when I thought I was done, turns out I wasn’t. Yesterday, I wanted to upload photos from my digital camera and found out I had yet another driver to retrieve.

But it was worth it.

Now there’s no “shifting” needed when I get to the office or go back home. I get to enjoy all the new features of Vista, from the pretty Aero themes to the cool new features of Media Center. And I can jump on either computer and work with ease.

I’m glad I finally upgraded. The only problem is…now I want a new laptop!

<Jean White>