We Got Served

Interesting post today from Mary-Jo following up on HP’s decision to delay the release of the HP MediaSmart Server. Interesting for a few reasons:

1. The rationale behind the delay came from Steve van Roekel at Microsoft, not from HP – surely it was HP’s decision to delay? HP are seemingly very quiet on the matter.

2. Every Windows release tends to have QFE’s (Quick Fix Engineering updates) – fixes to the code which slip in between RTM and general availability. Remember when you first installed Windows Vista, and the first time you opened up Windows Update, there were a bunch of updates waiting for you? They’re QFEs. The guys at MS keep working on bugs post-RTM, you know. But I’m surprised that HP would delay a hardware release for a QFE unless it was either a big show-stopper, or severely impacted their bundled add-ins.

3. I don’t get how (given the timescales) a small fix would make WHS more “user-friendly”. User-friendly to whom? Add-in developers (via the SDK) or the end-user? What’s the issue with the current SDK? Lots of add-ins appear to be utilising it perfectly well.

Steve VanRoekel, Director of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server Solutions Group. “These updates will include enhancements to the product aimed at allowing developers writing add-ins to better utilize Windows Home Server.

“HP has decided to wait for one of these updates (and they are writing add-ins on top of Home Server),” VanRoekel confirmed.

So, it sounds like either there’s a pretty big issue with the SDK that needs sorting quickly, or HP’s add-ins need a bit of last-minute spit and polish. Either way, there’s little impact for Europe, as it appears that HP’s MediaSmart and MediaSmart Premier servers will be shipping from January 2008.

Fingers crossed we get a chance to install RTM soon so we can see for ourselves what updates are coming down the line in September.