I recently had the opportunity to discuss Windows Home Server with Charlie Kindel, Microsoft’s General Manager for the Windows Home Server product. We had an email dialogue, followed by a phone conversation. I’ve pulled together four posts based on our dialogue. I hope to fill in a few areas where the publically available information is a little thin. This is part 2 of a 4 part series. (Link to Part 1)
User Management
RH: I’m kinda disappointed that there isn’t a centralized user store in this edition. You mentioned somewhere (C9 I think) that this was considered early on, but abandoned because of complexity. Is this something that might come along in a future release, or perhaps released out-of-band so that the Sam’s of the world (Check out the Channel9 Video for a description of the Sam persona) can have a mini AD at home?
CEK: Shipping is a feature too. 🙂 There are tons of technical issues which make delivering an Active Directory based solution in the home hard. But the biggest issue is the fact that the Windows client SKUs for the home are limited in this regard. Remember, that we have a philolsophy that says “If we can’t do it right, we shouldn’t do it in a particular release”. It is absolutely on our roadmap to climb this mountain in the future.
RH: Is there any support for centralized parental controls, specifically web use monitoring, content filtering, and usage restrictions?
CEK: We believe this is an important scenario and will enable it in the future. Again, there is ample opportunity for 3rd parties to add value here.
One Man Shouting 