We Got Served

As we’re coming to the end of the year, the first year of Windows Home Server in the market, I thought rather than bore you all with my thoughts on the year’s best products (although I might still actually do that in the coming weeks) I’d open up the inaugural We Got Served Awards, with the community voting for the best WHS Hardware, Software and Community Add-ins.

Unfortunately, there’s no glitzy gala dinner, no red carpet, no gold envelopes, and for the winners, no big prizes but they do get the kudos of being voted this year’s best product by the Windows Home Server community, which is surely the best prize of all!

For voters, however, there are prizes. A month or so ago, the Windows Home Server team sent me a few pieces of pretty exclusive Windows Home Server swag, which I will be giving away to three lucky voters who will be picked out at random. It’s pretty cool stuff too, but I won’t give away the secret right now. (No, it’s not a HP MediaSmart Server, sorry!)

The Voting Categories

There are three categories for which I’d like you all to vote. Let’s take a look at them individually.

Best Windows Home Server Hardware of 2007

If you take a look at the site’s Hardware section, you’ll see that we’ve covered an extensive range of hardware that has been developed specifically for Windows Home Server. However, the rule here is that you can only vote for hardware that has been released this year – sorry to Medion, Fujitsu-Siemens, Lacie and others who couldn’t get their act together quickly enough to have units out in the marketplace!

But, you can vote for great units like the HP MediaSmart Server, Tranquil PC’s T7-HSA, T2-WHS-A2 or T2-WHS-A3, Norco’s DS-520G, even the Velocity Micro NetMagix Home Server.

Best Windows Home Server Software of 2007

This category focuses on commercially available (i.e. paid for) software that has either been f.ully released to the public, or is in beta. So here, think of software such as Diskeeper 2008 Home Server, Raxco’s PerfectDisk 8 for Windows Home Server, Proxure’s KeepVault or JungleDisk’s online backup solutions, SageTV’s Media Server, and Avast’s AntiVirus software for Windows Home Server.

Best Windows Home Server Community Add-in of 2007

As far as I’m concerned, this is the daddy of them all. Yes, we had the Microsoft Code2Fame competition, where the WHS product team and a bunch of media darlings awarded prizes for what they considered to be the best add-in for Windows Home Server. But almost a year into the public life of Windows Home Server, it’s time for the community to vote for the best, most essential Windows Home Server add-in of the year. You find a long list of all available add-ins over at our Windows Home Server Add-ins section. Take some time to look through the options – even download a couple you may not have tried out, and then let me know which one you consider to be the best of the year.

Will you share the Code2Fame judges opinion and vote for Whiist? Or will you got for one of the plethora of Wake on LAN add-ins available? Or something entirely left-field? The choice is yours!

Rules: no commercial add-ins can be voted for in this category – it’s been made freely available by the community, for the community. If it’s commercial, it goes into the Software category above.

How To Vote

Update: Voting Is Now Closed  – thanks to all of you that voted. Check back on New Year’s Eve for the Winners!

A specific mailbox has been set-up for you to cast your votes, (which will get spammed to death as I’m about to publish it, but hey, that’s my problem).

1. Best Hardware:
2. Best Software:
3. Best Add-in:

Voting begins NOW (December 11th) for two weeks, and all votes must be cast by 11.59pm GMT on Christmas Day (December 25th). Results will be revealed in a WGS Special on New Year’s Eve.

Spread the word to friends and family as we want as many votes in as possible! Good Luck to all!