Home > Consumer Reviews > HP EX470 MediaSmart Home Server (AMD Live, Windows Home Server, 500 GB Hard Drive)

This is the worst piece of computer hardware I've ever purchased. First of all, it's incredibly slow. Backups, net access, it's all incredibly slow. 20 hours to back up 20 megs, on a gigabyte network? That's just weak.

I thought this would be a good way to share some files with friends, but they have all given up, waiting 10 minutes for a single page to load.

Even at $10 this piece of caca is overpriced.

Don't buy it.

Make sure that you realize that you will NOT be able to backup those new 64-bit Windows Vista installations that HP and others have been hocking that finally take advantage of the 64-bit CPUs that have been on the market now for years. If you have 64-bit Vista just wait a while. By the time Microsoft gets around to delivering this capability, more vendors will be selling boxes with 4 drive bays and Windows Home Server pre-installed - at significantly lower cost.

This product is not ready for prime time. Here are the specifics. Hp has a problem with "SOME" switches. We tried 3 switches (Belkin vision gigabit wifi station and two dlink switches). We could only make a management connection with the oldest dlink switch. Customer support said this was an issue they were looking into but that they could not point to any known good products that we could use. BAsically with two people working on this for 6 hours and little support and followthrough from customer support it was returned.
The install script is all automated and does not allow for any real advanced troubleshooting. It also does not really let you inovate to try and get the thing working.
One good idea we did get was to use the remote desktop connection feature of windowsto get into the box. YOu will need to have been able to set the admin password but if you have gotten the setup to work once the admin user name is "Administrator" and then the password you setup through the install wizard.

I am truly disappointed and will be very happy when this beta product ships as a ready for prime time server.

this item was very hard to set up. it took over 20 calls to the help desk, in it itself a arduous experience, to get it working. unless you are very computer savvy give this a pass. by the way we are still having problems with connecting for the automatic back-up feature. also, if you computer dies, as one of ours did after we set up the system, YOU CAN'T GET AT THE BACK UP MADE FOR THAT COMPUTER FROM OTHER COMPUTERS ON THE NET WORK. in short the back up feature is really worthless! i would never buy anthing from hp again.

In reviewing the specs on this server, seems like a great price/value for a central storage home system - very well done.