Further to my post this week regarding Acer’s European specifications and pricing for their easyStore Home Server, the company have been in touch today to confirm full details and estimated street pricing.
As we thought, there will be two specifications released in the coming weeks, but the specifications are better than indicated on Acer’s Dutch website, with 1.2 and 3Tb storage options being released and both systems coming with 2Gb RAM on board. Better still, the street pricing is likely to be really aggressive to drive take up of the product in the retail channel.
Here’s the specs:
SKU 1
Model: easyStore H340
Processor: Atom N230
Memory: 2GB RAM
Storage: 2 x 640GB
Estimated Street Price: €399/£368
SKU 2
Model: easyStore H340
Processor: Atom N230
Memory: 2GB RAM
Storage: 3 x 1TB
Estimated Street Price: €499/£460
That’s definitely the kind of pricing I was expecting to see from Acer, and it’s great news for the home server category. Certainly we need to see prices of home servers coming down and offering stronger value against Linux NAS devices. There are a couple of ways that can be achieved and aggressive pricing of multi-drive home servers is one of them.
So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at a comparison of the key players right now in the home server world and their models (I’ve converted all pricing to US$ for comparison purposes)
| HP EX485 | HP EX487 | Acer H340 1 | Acer H340 2 | FSC Scaleo 2105 | Tranquil SQA-5H 2000 | |
| Processor | Intel Celeron 2.0GHz | Intel Celeron 2.0GHz | Intel Atom 230 1.6Ghz | Intel Atom 230 1.6Ghz | Intel Celeron 1.6GHz | Intel Atom 330 2 x 1.6GHz |
| RAM | 2Gb | 2Gb | 2Gb | 2Gb | 2Gb | 2Gb |
| Storage | 1 x 750Gb | 2 x 750Gb | 2 x 640Gb | 3 x 1Tb | 2 x 500Gb | 1 x 1Tb |
| Spare Bays | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| USB | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 6 |
| eSATA | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Price | $575 (Amazon) | $699 (Amazon) | $514 | $644 | $570 (ex Tax) (Nice PC) | $697 (ex Tax) |
Obviously this is a guideline only – not all of these are available in every country and tax will vary. But certainly it looks like Acer are going in to the market well priced to try to drive sales volume. Let’s hope they work as hard to also educate their retail partners and customers in stores on the benefits of a home server.
We have one of the first units on the way to us for review and I’m really looking forward to checking it out. Looks like things in the home server world are becoming interesting….
