Not that it’ll make a bit of difference to you but Home Server isn’t geared for those that know a “local Linux geek” much less to even ask for such a thing. You’re talking about the people that still refer to hard drive space as “memory” or their desktop wallpaper as the “screensaver” yet have two or three computers in the house and have a bit of income to spend on a solid backup solution. Almost universally every review of Home Server, and especially HP’s MediaSmart, has been high on praise and low on faults.

Home Server is also geared towards the likes of me, a software developer that would much rather spend time actually writing code or even *gasp* time away from my computer instead of playing computer janitor keeping a kernel patched or setting up cron jobs. I want to play tech support even less every time my wife needs something from backup or wants to add a new laptop into the backup cycle.

So, yes, you can definitely reproduce the same functionality as Home Server for cheaper if you know what you’re doing and you have time to spare but I doubt you can do it as easily or in such a user-friendly way. Anyway, thanks for keeping people abreast of the issue, it’s a nasty one and people should be aware of it. It would have actually been more helpful if you would have posted a link to the KB articles that describe work-arounds for now.