ITGumbo: spicing IT up

While it was a pleasure to use and fairly easy for a technically proficient user to install, a neophyte would need user training and find setup difficult. Remember, that's not such a bad thing since most advanced home networking and computer devices require some type professional installation, integration and user training to optimize the product and to ensure it works well once added to the home network. Retailers with an established or developing services department should look at this and other IT products as a chance to offer a fuller solution and higher margin services, such as consulting, installation, training and long-term network maintenance. Those types of services help keep retailers' technicians on the road and serve to build a deeper relationship with customers, which should lead to future sales.
To sum up the MediaSmart Server is to describe it as a multimedia device that serves as a hub for a user's networked PCs, helping to consolidate digital content into one central repository and simplify the management of that content. While some home users may be familiar with home storage devices, HP's new solution goes well beyond basic networked storage, providing robust functionality not usually found in typical run-of-the-mill storage devices. Those features include remote access, backup and restore and storage management.
Remote access over the Internet is one of the server's more powerful features. Setup involves configuring the network port to allow incoming traffic, registering the home server with a third-party dynamic DNS routing service, and configuring the Windows operating system to allow remote users. This is where a retailer's installation division can provide some great value to the customer. HP told me that its home products division is in preliminary talks with retailers and their installation divisions to help them better sell, position integrate and upgrade the device as part of a full home network.
One obvious upgrade to the product is storage capacity. The unit is sold with 500GB of capacity but houses four SATA drive bays for up to 1TB of storage.
One thing to note is that the server is designed for use with a PC running Windows XP, Vista, or Media Center Edition. It is not a stand-alone device. This gives retailers the opportunities to sell new PCs, upgrade the OS on old ones, and to push the newest wired and wireless networking gear. Remember that more consumers are building very basic home networks with limited and sometimes shoddy functionality. Most of those consumers aren't familiar with the lifestyle benefits a well-built network can provide or the services retailers offer to make that happen. It's up to the retailer to provide the customer with that information.
The MediaSmart Server is a headless system that attaches to a network. It is built with top-of-the-line hardware components and runs on AMD's optimized platform. The system's super fast, so home users won't experience any latency when thumb-nailing images, rendering video or accessing fat media files. One of the server's standout features is its innovative Web-based photo and video sharing capabilities. Not only does it give users the ability to upload and share those files to any location with an Internet connection, but it also ensures that photos are stored safely. With all those additional images within easy reach for downloading and sharing, consumers may be compelled to actually do something with their photos after they snap them. Retailers can use those features to help sell additional still and video cameras, photo printers, toners, photo-only paper and high-resolution monitors.
The MediaSmart Server is a well-designed unit that will be a strong and needed addition to consumers' home and small-business networks, which are increasing in complexity each day. At the same time, it gives retailers with growing installation/integration divisions more opportunity to develop and sell value-added, margin-rich services, which helps to build customer loyalty and incremental sales.