I'm a little late to this, but the idea of a version of Windows Server for the home is a great idea.
The idea comes from Rick Hallihan with a follow up post here. The story was picked up by Charlie Kindel and Robert Scoble.
I totally agree with this idea and would like to see it happen soon. Setting up a home network is not uncommon nowadays, and with many homes having more than one PC it only makes sense. You can easily centralize and control things like network shares, user profiles and permissions as well as a common e-mail repository.
The way things stand now it's kind of a headache keeping files in sync between my three machines at home as well as getting e-mail or something else that is only accessible on one of them. I find that I'm constantly putting down the notebook and walking over to the desktop to check an e-mail or something that is only accessible there.
Finally, what really makes this idea shine is the suggestion of tying together all of the multimedia aspects, allowing anyone on the network to easily access anything that's in the media library (as long as they have permission). Awesome.
P.S. What about home automation? That idea totally excites me as well
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