New MediaSmart box cuts price (and corners)

Monolithic in design and simple in principle, HP’s latest MediaSmart home server, the LX195, runs Windows HS and has a single 640GB hard drive, gigabit ethernet, a 1.GHz Atom CPU and just 1GB of RAM. Though the specs are unimpressive, it’s only $390 and has 4 USB ports–consider it intermediary between high-end local backup and low-end NAS.

HP launches a lower price Windows Home Server, the MediaSmart LX195 [CrunchGear]

1. [strider_mt2k]

   I built a similar box, but used an MSI Wind barebones with 2GB of RAM, XP Pro and a 1.5TB HD.
   I also put an existing 500GB HD in there.
   Got it all from Newegg.

   I think it was around that price all told, but I later sprung for a really fast 16GB CF card that now holds the operating system.
   The HDs are just for storage.

   The thing’s been running 24/7 since just before Christmas no problems.

2. [Rob Beschizza]

   I rolled my own NAS, but found it sort of noisy, and was always worried about how much electricity it used.

3. [rasz]

   use old laptop with broken screen if you want silence and low electric bill