In the old days, a computer server was something that was in the back room behind a locked door and tended to by god-like geeks. If you said that you have a server in your house, people would think there was something wrong with you and/or you needed to get a life.

Well, times have changed. Technology is in every part of our lives and many of us have multiple computers in our house and they need to be managed. Microsoft has taken their very successful Windows Server 2003 and used it as the foundation for Windows Home Server a.k.a. WHS.

WHS doesn't try to do everything; it just does a few things well. It can monitor the health of your windows computers, it can handle the backing up of all your valuable data, and it helps you share your photographs, videos and music around the house and on the internet.

Lastly, when you are not home, it can help you gain access to your files in a secure way.

I recently setup my own Windows Home Server and started using it. Over the next few weeks, I will give more details and opinion of what 's involved. However, my first impression is WOW! This is great, and what? Microsoft did it?

The hardware requirements for WHS are very modest. Almost any recent vintage computer will work. Setup is very simple. Answer a few questions, click OK and walk away for an hour. When you come back, you have a server.

From the other computers in your house, you connect to the server and configure it. Tell the server what to backup up, and it done while you sleep. Copy your family photographs onto the server, make an album and a web site and just start sharing it.

The only thing I have not done, is access my files remotely. But, that's next. So hang on, as we dive deeper into this.

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