The Windows Home Server Team is pleased to announce that Power Pack 3 will be available in all shipping languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish) on November 24th, 2009. Power Pack 3 will be made available to existing users via Windows Update. Users need to have Windows Home Server with Power Pack 2 already installed on their home server. Power Pack 3 will automatically install as part of Windows Update if Automatic Updates is enabled on the home server.
As we’ve communicated in a past post, Power Pack 3 improves the Windows Home Server experience with Windows 7 and Windows Media Center by providing new features like: backup and restore of computers running Windows 7, Windows 7 Libraries integration, enhancements for Windows Media Center, and better support for netbook computers. Power Pack 3 will enable the most optimal experience for Windows 7 users on a Windows Home Server network.
“If you've recently upgraded to Windows 7, Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 is an essential download providing enhanced integration between the two platforms and a number of cool new features. Combine library support with enhanced features for Windows Media Center, and we're really starting to see Microsoft bring together the Windows Home Server and Windows 7 client experience so that your media can be stored on your home server and enjoyed seamlessly on TV, PC and Mobile devices with little effort from the user. The bad old days of copy, paste, convert and transcode may well be behind us,” says Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) Terry Walsh of We Got Served.
Microsoft MVP Alex Kuretz of MediaSmartServer.net says “Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 makes storing and accessing your media easier by bringing all the content contained on your Home Server smoothly into your Windows 7 libraries. TV Archive is also a very nice feature that has allowed me to record TV shows and move them to my Home Server to be watched at a later time.”
Here are some details on what’s new:
Windows 7 Libraries integration
When you install the Windows Home Server Connector and log on a computer running Windows 7, you can access the Windows Home Server shared folders from the Windows 7 libraries.
Windows 7 Action Center backup warning suppression
After you install the Windows Home Server Connector to enable the home server backup for your computer running Windows 7, you can suppress the Action Center warning reminding you that Windows Backup has not been set up.
Windows 7 power settings
You can configure your computer running Windows 7 to wake up at a scheduled backup time and then go back to sleep after the backup finishes.
Console support for Windows 7
Windows 7 is properly displayed as the operating system shown in the Computers & Backup tab.
Windows Search
Windows Search 4 is included to improve query search times, indexing times, and reliability. Extended Remote Discovery increases the efficiency of searching across all your libraries running Windows Search 4. Files encrypted with EFS are now supported.
TV archive
Windows Home Server can automatically archive recorded TV by moving your recordings from a Windows Media Center computer to your home server in the format of your choice. This enables playback in the correct format for your home computers and/or portable devices.
Console view
You can view information about your home server’s storage space, hard drives, backup status, and more from Windows Media Center.
Complete details are available in the Power Pack 3 Release Documentation.
We want to thank our community for all of their testing and feedback over these past months with the Power Pack 3 Beta. You validated that Power Pack 3 was ready for release. We like to think that we are building this product together – as a passionate community.
- The Windows Home Server Team