I've gotten a lot of email about the leak of Windows Home Server "Vail," i.e. the next major version of Microsoft's home server solution. (Read Mary Jo Foley's write-up.) The side issue here, of course, is that I haven't really mentioned it yet. (Though I did discuss it on yesterday's podcast a bit.) Why is this?
I'm in kind of a tough spot with this one. I was briefed on Vail a long time ago. So long, in fact, that I'm guessing much has changed. My rough understanding of this release, and this is while trying to not step all over an NDA I've agreed to, is that it will be based on Windows Server 2008 (now R2) and will be 64-bit only. It will include some form of Windows Media Center-style TV recording functionality, most likely.
So, yeah. I will install the leaked build. But I need to figure out whether I can even discuss this in any meaningful way. If I can, I will do so.
In the meantime, this thing is in very rough shape so don't expect much if you're looking to install it. For example, it cannot replace the shipping version of the software, it's just not there yet.
Rafael and I are talking about doing an in-depth feature list, like we did for Windows 7. His tools for getting the OS to identify each feature it includes will work for this Windows version as well, so it should be pretty authoritative.