Filip

Rory, don't worry about the edits. It's only natural that a video that comes out on the day of the announcement cannot reveal everything. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are questions/answers you will not be allowed to publish even post-launch. It's a commercial company with trade secrets, which help them outcompete the competitors. So?

The video was really an amazing source of information on what you can do with this thing, and the edits were sort of funny.

Regarding the target audience, my father in law (+65) wants one (let me clarify that: he needs one and knows it). 

My own home definitely need one (count me on the Sam side), but I'm actually pretty sure my wife will be the one working mostly with it (and she's not a geek). And I'm excited to rid myself of work I really don't want to do.

My brothers with teenage children were going through the roof when I told them about Home Server.

My family (incl inlaws) wants 5 home servers, counting only the early adopters, provided that Windows XP is sufficient on client PCs. 5 of 13 households isn't bad, so I don't understand what this "lack of target audience" is about.

But just release it to the European market in time for 2007 holiday shopping, and we'll see what happens.

This is an amazing piece of software. It really turns the tables on GDrive or Live Drive. Why would I want to store my documents at Microsoft or Google, when I can have the privacy of storing them on my own server, and yet have the zero-maintenance anyway. I love the Desktop Search right on the storage server (as opposed to on every PC in the house), the super-quick easy backup and the ability to restore a complete computer on a blank disk in just 1 hour (that is going to save me time! I'll sell one to my parents too ), the ability to store documents centrally with infinite storage (no more manually mounting disks anymore), with resiliance to a crashing harddisk (can't do that with an ordinary mount). The central management of the security of all home PCs, without the hassle of complex policies and settings. I'm sold. And throwing in the remote access to applications over the Internet is the ultimate selling point for Vista on my other PCs, in my case.

I have just two requests for Charlie Kindel:

1. You mentioned that Windows Media Center initially was too closed for geeks (and ISVs) to extend. Could your team please please provide an API that allows an external service to plug a page and top tab in the Home Server Console? I'm thinking of third parties providing an easy interface to do home automation, for instance.

2. On the client PC with Home Server Connector, could you please provide a system tray icon which allows to take a backup immediately (like I know is already possible from the Homer Server itself for that PC).
Or alternatively the ability to create a backup every time the computer shuts down (with max of once a day).
This is just so that computer don't consume energy while waiting to be backed up over night. I'm sure my parents will NOT keep their PC on just to back it up.


PS. Can this Home Server also do ASP.NET web serving?

Links in Outlook work just fine, like they did before for me.

I have some feature requests:

• Could you add a "highlight" button to the search box, such that words in the box are highlighted in the text rendered. This is a feature I use a lot to quickly find my search terms in long HTML pages.
• I believe there is a lot the can be done to improve the favorites:
  
  • Favorites are stored online, such that I can see them from any page. Fits nicely with Microsoft's Live initiative, and takes the wind out of Google's "favorites".
  • The ability to share some, but not all, of my favorites, with a selected group of users. Like shared folders. Works best when favorites are stored online.
  • An RSS feed on my shared online favorites, which updates the RSS items when I add, delete or move a bookmark.
  • Seeing the shared favorites of others (that I registered to) as a directory in my own shared favorites. Again, works best when favorites are online.
  • The ability to see and browse through my favorites using the meta tags found on the page bookmarked. This works a lot like browsing MP3s in Windows Media Player using the tags inside.

I do like the changes made so far, especially printing and RSS.

I'm running a bit ahead of your video's here, but I have a special request for the Powerpoint 12 team. In Powerpoint 2003, they included this really cool feature of drawing boxes, and then making them 3D. It may have been there before, but I only recently noticed it.

There is only one problem with it: when you enter text or an image (which is almost always), and then tilt the boxes, the text/image does not turn along with the boxes.

I can see how tilting the geometric shape is easier, but when I see Avalon tilting items so easily, I really wonder if now is the time to upgrade this feature so that we can all make cool 3D block diagram with tilted text and graphics on it, right from within Powerpoint.

Oh, and if you have time to spare: transparent reflection below, as if it is standing on a shining surface would be cool. Hell, while you're at it, why not just allowing XAML objects to be inserted into Powerpoint, and let us create that fancy tilt with transparency using Expression. But I'll definitely settle for the ability to tilt text and graphics (grouped with boxes, same angle).

I totally agree with Aran.

Is there any indication when the first code, likely a CTP, will be released? We'd love to provide you with actual use feedback. Even a vague timing idea, such as "early next year", "first half of year", "around launch time of Vista", ...

If it is anything like Comega, that would be absolutely great. 

While you are at it, could you include the Spec# features (http://research.microsoft.com/specsharp/) as well? That would be great for both developer productivity (less runtime bugs to track down) as well as for the user!

Any news on including Spec# in C# 3.0?