Perhaps disagree is a bad word. But, there is a clear nonsensical problem between the Remote Desktop licensing in Windows Live Mesh and in Windows Home Server.
With Windows Home Server, you can log into your Home Server URL, and access all the Remote Desktop computers on your home network. Great. Problem is, any XP Home, or Vista Home systems… don’t have Remote Desktop, so they can’t be remotely accessed.
But, for some reason, Live Mesh scoffs at this restriction. With Live Mesh, you can Remote Desktop to XP Home and Vista Home systems. Microsoft finally realized that the lack of consumer Remote Desktop access was hurting them.
So why, oh why, does Windows Home Server not commit to adding this functionality? Power Pack 1 is in beta, but the lockout on Remote Desktop with consumer Windows is still there.
And no Microsoft, this should not be a selling point for the next version of Windows Home Server. The WHS team has taken pride in claiming that this was a first-gen product that doesn’t immediately scream flawed (except for that data corruption bug, oops). Let’s get WHS back on track, before the world tunes it out completely.
You might also like...
The technical answer, as I understand it, is Live Mesh isn’t Remote Desktop in the technical sense: it’s not using the RDP protocol. From a user perspective, this remains unhelpful, but that is the ‘reason’
Live Mesh does use RDP: http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=399578
Even if that were the answer, how in the world can the Home Server team feel good about telling folks that they have to install Live Mesh to get Remote Desktop functionality on home computers? And, there’s still a bit of a void from the Home Server team about how Live Mesh will co-habit and integrate with Home Server. Right now, aside from the lack of a large online storage share… the two products seem rival in a lot of ways. And, I don’t think that’s Microsoft’s goal… they want you to have a Mesh and a Home Server.
Hopefully this is just because the Home Server team has been busy finishing Power Pack 1. Hopefully, they’ll have answers to these questions soon.
As it stands right now, I probably wouldn’t buy WHS over again. Live Mesh, combined with a NAS for backups, cleans Home Server’s clock right now.
[...] At PDC, Microsoft let drop the announcement that I pushed for. The Windows Home Server Team has announced that the next version of the product will indeed [...]