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Imserba Webstore - HP LX195 MediaSmart Home Server
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List Price: $472.00
Our Price: $299.99
Your Save: $ 172.01 ( 36% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Personal Computers
Brand: Hewlett-Packard
Color: Black
CPU Manufacturer: XXX
CPU Speed: 1.6
CPU Type: Intel Xscale PXA255
EAN: 0884420857396
Feature: Sleek, slim home server with 640 GB of storage for easy backups and media streaming in your home over over the Internet
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Hewlett Packard
Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard
Model: LX195
Modem Description: None
Processor Count: 1
Publisher: Hewlett Packard
Studio: Hewlett Packard
System Memory Type: SIMM
Warranty: 1 year warranty
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Features
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Sleek, slim home server with 640 GB of storage for easy backups and media streaming in your home over over the Internet
Remotely streams photos and music to any Internet-connected PC or Mac; upload photos to Flickr, Facebook and more
Network-based backup of Windows PCs and Macs using Apple's Time Machine
Expandable via four USB 2.0 ports for connecting to external USB hard drives
Intel Celeron 2.0 GHZ 64-bit Processor; 2 GB of RAM (800 MHz); Gigabit Ethernet networking
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Editorial Reviews:
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Built to Serve Your Digital Life! The HP MediaSmart Server LX195 is a home server that can automatically backup and protect your digital memories, centralize your media and content for sharing with friends and family, and enable you to enjoy your digital media while at home or away. Powered by Microsoft Windows Home Server software and Intel's Atom 1.6 GHZ Processor 230. Network-based backup of PCs using Windows Home Server and Macs using Apple¿s Time machine. Centralize your digital life for sharing with friends and family. The HP MediaSmart Server will automatically centralize your digital media for sharing with family and friends, and enable you to enjoy your digital media while at home or away. The HP Media Collector conveniently schedules the server to copy and centralize your Windows PC media files and libraries (including iTunes and playlists). Using an Internet-connected PC, you can quickly publish the photos on your server and/or directly to popular websites such as Snapfish, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, and even Facebook. Serve up your digital life for friends, family and business associates! The HP Photo Viewer allows you to create photo albums for sharing with family and friends. You can even designate certain albums as ¿private¿ and available only for people who you choose to share.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Revolutionized our home theater - nothing less
Comment: The best part of this device isn't the copious storage, or the slick user interface, or the automatic backup feature. No, the HP server shines in its ability to connect to literally every networked device in your house. This means that all our computers see it, our Wii sees it, and most importantly, our PS3 sees it and can access all the movies, photos, and music stored there. In effect this system means you can catalog ALL your movies and access them through the PS3. The only downside appears to be that, since it runs through your router, the streaming rate is limited to the *upload* speed of your router. it might be possible to hook an additional router up to improve bandwidth, but I haven't tried it. So the limitation on streaming is, for us, about 2MB/s (1-1.5 MB/s in practical use). Most MPEG-encoded movies (AVIs) will stream fine with those bitrates, but MP4s and MOVs (which are larger and need more throughput) are choppy and essentially unwatchable via streaming. MP3 music files transmit with no problem. So if you're thinking about getting this for digital streaming, make sure your movies are in an AVI format or that the bitrate is low enough so your router can keep up.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good, but missing key elements. Look at the Acer instead or other HP Models.
Comment: ^^ ** Key Point: While this machine is very nice and fast with the Atom Processor and Windows Home Server - it lacks redundancy. This is a huge problem if you want to make sure you never lose your pictures or home movies of the kids .... you can add an external drive - but at that point it costs as much as a server with redundancy ...
The HP MediaSmart Server is a bit of a weird niche product. If you are looking for a NAS with lots of storage and redundant backups - then this is not your device. If you are a non-techie who doesn't really want to mess with anything and just have a device that uploads your kids pictures so the grandparents can see, then this might be for you. But most of you - aren't shopping for a Windows Home server. So ... hence a dilemma.
As far as performance and the raw ability, this little box is well made and is very fast. It is the "undisputed performance leader" as far as loading files to and from this machine. It also sports the underrated Windows Home server OS. This is not a Linux box and works well as a backup solution for Windows and Macs (with time machine support).
I am personally using this as a media server for my TiVo. I use my TiVo HD to play all my media and this HP sits ready to go at a moments notice to play Horton hears a who or the Incredibles for my kids.
The problem lies in this: if you want a machine to store your files and media, and also harness the power of Windows Home Server, there are better options that also include redundancy. This little box only has 1 hard drive = no redundancy.
If you are thinking about building one: (with a much higher capacity and feature set , with realatively green performance)
This machine is good at what it does: find your pictures and other media files, backup a computer or two (more than that starts to eat away at your base 640gb), and serve up some movies / music to your iTunes , and transferring pictures to flikr or picasa. It just seems to be too little for too much money and it doesn't do what you really need it to do - which is to have some redundancy. The only way to get that redundancy is to plug in additional external hard drives - which really puts this machine out of the picture given the alternatives.
If you are going to spend some money on a NAS/Media box - spend it on one of the other HP's with multiple hard drives, or better yet, on another Windows Home server that should be just as fast with redundancy : the Acer
****************Follow up************
After playing with the unit for some time, I found that the media collector (the best feature) wasn't collecting my media properly. Ended up being a service issue. If you go to "Start", Programs, Accessories, System tools and then "Scheduled Tasks" it will show the Media Collector task - you will haev to edit the feature to run more often - after that - it has been collecting really well. I set mine to run every hour.
Otherwise - works great. Only drawback is the lack of redundancy ... :(
Customer Rating:
Summary: Simple Server Solution
Comment: Most people will take a look at the HP LX195 MediaSmart Home Server and be a little confused as to what exactly you're getting for your money. PC's are becoming popular as media centers and this MediaSmart Server takes it one step further. For families who share one main computer where all of their music, movies and pictures are held, this is not going to be much help; you'd be better off with an external hard drive. However, for families living in the 21st century with multiple computers and a need to get data both back and forth and backed up, this could be the perfect addition to your home network.
Of course, the LX195 offers a lot more than just a hub and safe for your data. It has a thoughtfully designed operating system that will keep track of your antivirus protection and windows updates in case you forget. It provides automatic backups. And best of all, it plays well with ps3 and xbox 360 so you can stream video to your tv, which is where you probably want it.
Now for the shortcomings - there are a few big ones for this bottom-of-the-line system. Due to it's price point, you'll be getting an adequate, but modest processor. Also, despite how cheap RAM is, you'll only get 1GB. Furthermore, the 640GB HDD may be more than enough space for most families, but is definitely a major thing to consider before you buy. Despite having 4 USB 2.0 ports, the expandability is meager. Unlike the more costly EX line of MediaSmart Servers, the LX195 has no extra internal bays. USB connections are slower than internal and an external drive will cost more than an internal one. Also, many USB drives require their own power outlet. At this price, it's hard to expect too much more, but a 1TB HDD and 2GB RAM would have bumped this Server up a notch (and a star).
Overall, I recommend this Server to homes with multiple computers and definitely to those with a video game system or computer capable of streaming network content to their tv. If you are in the bad habit of not backing up your data, then this was definitely designed for you. Those looking for the ultimate tech toy for streaming HD movies and backing up multiple 1TB discs should look on to the EX line or elsewhere.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Avoid HP Media servers at all cost!!
Comment: I bought 2 HP Media Vaults - MV2020 for storage capacity and print server capabilities. One held all my files from the past 20 years, including priceless family photos, and the other was purely backup. Both have failed catastrophically within several days of each other!! Discs spinning loudly as though out of control, unable to shutdown, and burning smell. HP customer service has been absolutely useless - website shows warranty expiring almost a year before I bought the units! After wasting time on the phone, I was told they would provide warranty replacement once I prove my purchase date (from Amazon), BUT I'm out of luck on all my data! Now trying recovery methods that will cost many times more than the HP units did in the first place!! DO NOT use HP Media servers even if obtained for free - not worth it! I thought I could trust the brand name, but found out HP is as worthless as their products.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pretty good, but can be better. Mac users, stay away!
Comment: First, let me start off with a message for Mac users: This product is USELESS for you. If you don't have at least one PC, you can't even setup the server! Otherwise, most of the features of the server, from automatic backups to media file management, cannot be utilized by Macs. To simplify, this server is nothing more than a really expensive external hard drive for a Mac. You can use time machine with the server...supposedly, as I couldn't get it to work. Other than that, you can just access and save files manually using the Finder. So if you're only using Macs, then this is a pointless product for you.
And now, for the PC users:
I have three computers in my home: two PCs and one Mac. Obviously it would be wonderful to access all my files (like music, photos, and documents) from any of the three computers. The HP LX195 MediaSmart Home Server is intended to make such a thing possible.
The server is easy to setup out of the box. Just plug in a network cable to your router and the AC adapter. Then insert the CD into one of your PCs. An installer will run which automatically finds the server on your network and takes care of most of the configuration. All you have to do is set a password for the server. That's it! Oh, and don't bother installing the McAfee protection software that is on the server. HP says that you get a 7-month free subscription to the software, but it wouldn't activate for me and just prompted me for more $$$.
The Windows Home Server operating system on the HP server is designed to automatically backup ALL PCs on your network during a time frame that you can designate. Initially, I couldn't get the backup to work successfully as the server would be downloading and installing updates at the same time. Once all the updates were completed, then I was able to get the full backup to work.
The best feature that I love about this server is that it will automatically find ALL pictures, videos, and music on all my PCs and store them in designated folders. So if I download new music to one PC, then an hour later I can access that music from the server using my other PC. Be advised that this feature is not enabled initially; you will have to manually turn it on.
Physically, the server is pretty small, about the size of a couple hardback books. It is very quiet and little heat is emitted from it. You can easily set the brightness of the LEDs to your preference. The best feature is that you can set times for the server to sleep so you can save some power consumption.
Overall, for PC users this is a great home server. The only feature that would make this even better is a built-in print server. Maybe it might be possible with some hacking, I'm not sure. And, of course, Mac support needs to be significantly improved! But since it is very easy to use with few glitches (just the updates out of the box), this product merits 4 stars.
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