They were released last year with AMD's Sempron 1.8-GHz 64-bit CPUs, 512MB of RAM, and 500GB and 1TB of drive space, respectively. Those are still upgrades from the original EX470 and EX475.
They sport relatively modest Intel Celeron 2.0-GHz 64-bit processors and 2GB of DDR2 RAM. The EX485, with a price tag of $599, comes with 750GB of storage, and the $749 EX487 has 1.5TB. It was the first to release home servers running the Microsoft OS when it launched the MediaSmart EX470 and EX475 more than a year ago. While most PC vendors are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the home server market, HP has dived in head first. Users can also set the MediaSmart servers to automatically detect and back up photos stored on networked PCs and enable those to be easily published to popular Web sites such as Google's Picasa, Facebook or Flickr, Roberts said. Besides compatibility with Time Machine, the new MediaSmarts can be set to back up to 's S3 Web-hosted storage service to provide an extra layer of data security.
HP is trying to do that by touting other features exclusive to the EX485 and EX487. Vendors 'need to get the message across 'yes, we're a little more expensive than a network drive, but you're going to be glad you spent the extra money because of x, y and z,'' Putscher said.
