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Microsoft has swung for the fence with its Windows Home Server and no wonder – there is almost nothing available like this on the market, so going after the niche segment was as tempting as a hanging curve ball. And though Microsoft managed to get good wood on it, you can't really call it a homer.

Maybe a bases-loaded triple, which is nothing to sniff at.

WHS is a server for people who do not have access to IT departments or even a geek friendly enough to donate the time required to configure a server. It will also be good for small businesses.

The server — wags are already calling it the WinHoSo — is a combination of three things, all designed for small networks. It acts as a backup system for every box on the network, a kind of network-attached storage (NAS) unit; it can feed its files and multimedia content to whatever system is allowed access (including the Xbox 360), and it can allow access to its contents from anywhere on the Internet through a personal home page and a browser.

What's interesting about this is the combination of functions. There are products that do one or two of the above, but not all three. And so the combination of services places the WHS in a new category of product, one that few other high-tech companies could be able to handle by themselves.

And even Microsoft can't do everything in the WHS by itself. The product is not generally on sale as software (though it's carried by a few on-line Canadian stores for a little more than $160), but comes bundled with the appropriate hardware, a hybrid halfway between an online storage device and a full-blown computer; Microsoft strongly recommends you buy WHS pre-installed on such a box — the one under review here is an HP MediaSmart Server. This unit comes with two 250-gigabyte drives (half a terabyte), and can be expanded with two more drives (there are four bays in it), USB 2.0 outboard drives (another four) and outboard serial ATA (SATA) drives. (Other Microsoft hardware partners include Iomega, Fujitsu, Gateway and LaCie.) It can handle up to a whopping four terabytes.

The HP MediaSmart Server is precisely what WHS requires, a device that is difficult to sell otherwise: A stripped-down "headless" box that requires no monitor, mouse or keyboard, or even sound. Based on an AMD processor with AMD Live technology, it attaches to the home or small office network via an Ethernet cable attached directly to the router that serves as the switch for the network.

The install-and-ignore concept means you don't actually sit in front of it to fiddle with the WHS settings, even though WHS is basically a variation on the ever-reliable Windows Server 2003 product. That server required operator intervention frequently enough, designed as it was for IT people.

In the case of the WHS, each separate computer on the network requires client software, called the Windows Home Server Console, which communicates with the WHS over an encrypted connection. HP adds another layer of software on top of this, but it seems to be there merely to add greater simplicity to that which is already almost too simple.

And that's where the WHS takes a swing and a miss.

In trying to be so simple, the WHS sometimes makes it awkward to do things that it was not designed to do simply.

The biggest single problem is, oddly, not Microsoft's fault. It's the way WHS uses broadband routers.

Getting the WHS to offer you files over the Internet requires your router to have universal plug and play (uPNP) installed and operational. There's still a lot of inconsistency among router manufacturers about how uPNP is implemented, and unless the router is the kind that WHS likes, users are forced to get their fingers dirty trying to configure routers that behaved perfectly normally until the WHS arrived.

In Globetechnology.com's case, it was a matter of a U.S. Robotics Wireless MAXg ADSL Gateway (router and switch combined), which has uPNP installed and turned on. WHS wouldn't recognize that uPNP was working, and there wasn't a firmware upgrade available at USR's site that would address the issue. (See how complicated it's getting already?) And trying to follow Microsoft's instructions to configure the router is a matter of understanding the art of port-forwarding as well as reconciling Microsoft's directions for doing this with the instructions offered by the router manufacturer; neither company speaks the same language.

This is a lazy infield fly to the first baseman.

A less problematic issue is that WHS has its own way of storing files, which it does by dumping them where it wants to put them according to the rules of file-sharing, and not where you think you might want them to be. This has been designed to keep the product as simple as possible, but it assumes that all the people on a network have a unity of purpose and an equally logical approach to their tasks. This might make it better for a small office, where system lockdowns are often necessary, but it can be limiting in home environments.

Call this one a walk.

There's a great feature here that even the geekier among us will appreciate: Because it can handle so many different kinds of drives in as many USB, Firewire, ATA, SATA and IDE ports as the hardware manufacturer has installed, it has a built-in way of dealing with them all: WHS sees them all as one large drive pool, meaning that it will see only one drive, which represents the sum of the space available on all the drives. Users don't need to deal with drive letters or all the other major arcana of managing disc systems.

Call it a variant of a RAID array, a series of protocols for directing how connected drives should behave. Taking this kind of approach to storage involves another neat trick: Since we all know that no single drive is insurance enough against failure, WHS allows a certain number of them to be replaced. Unless the drive suffers a head crash, WHS will remove the data from that drive, disconnect the drive from the pool, and then allow you to connect a new one.

Specifically, the first purpose of the WHS is as a backup system for Windows XP and Windows Vista computers, including system restore settings and a monitor for the health of the network. It can be configured to back up the system at certain times, or within a certain time window (say, during the night). It stores the backup copies intelligently — not creating duplicate copies of unchanged files and puts the backups from each networked computer on the WHS.

Moreover, since this is a shared network service, WHS works with the Server Message Block (SMB, sometimes called Samba) protocol, which is also used by Apple OS X and Linux machines, meaning those machines can be connected as well.

To start the process of configuration, a package called WHS Connector must be installed, which will connect your PC to the server; Within the WHS Connector is the management console, and it is this application that becomes the way you interact with the server. It also becomes its own gateway for seeing your server from elsewhere on the Internet.

Remote access is a lot like some of the remote-access subscription services available on the market (I use Toronto-based 01 Communiqué's I'm InTouch to control my system from outside my firewall), but this is free outside the original purchase. The most interesting way of communication is through the Windows Live service; all users can get a free domain name (the address is in the form of YourName.homeserver.com), and it offers access to as many as 10 users who can then look at those files you choose to share. Aside from this, remote access can let you get into any PC installed on the WHS network, and access to the WHS Console — although this way must be done through the console alone, which fits into a browser.

Because WHS is based on Windows Server 2003, many of its features have already been forged, tempered and tested. But its interface is Version 1.0, and some of its configurations also require more anguish than this product is supposed to cure.

Ultimately, it leaves you halfway out of your seat watching as a towering hit devolves into something less than a homer for Microsoft. But it still gives you a lot cheer about — especially since it's only the first inning and fans can expect future enhancements.