Windows Home Server was aggressively marketed as an attractive consumer storage solution for everyday users, as part of Microsoft's next generation of Windows products.  With a retail price of $189 and hardware setups such as the HP 500GB EX470 retailing with the OS for as little as $599, the price certainly seems to be right. 

Unfortunately, Windows Home Server is still experiencing teething problems.  DailyTech previously reported that users' files were being corrupted by Windows Home Server when simply trying to access and save files.  Microsoft responded to the data corruption by stating, "When you use certain programs to edit files on a home computer that uses Windows Home Server, the files may become corrupted when you save them to the home server."

Originally the issue seemed relatively germane as the list of programs afflicted was relatively small -- photo editors, Office Outlook '07, Office OneNote '03/'07, Quicken, QuickBooks, and torrents.  A Microsoft employee during Christmas break, soon after the issue cropped up, wrote in an anonymous blog posting that Microsoft staff were working full time over the holidays and the issue would be resolved very soon.

Two months have passed and the issue has not been resolved.  Instead, Microsoft conceded that the scope of the problem is much bigger than initially estimated.  Microsoft acknowledged numerous customer reports of corruption in the following programs, though it says it has thus far been unable to replicate them:

• Apple iTunes
  
• Zune Software
  
• Photoshop Elements
  
• WinAmp
  
• Microsoft Office Excel
  
• Mozilla Thunderbird
  
• Visual Dataflex

The expanded list greatly increases the number of users who may eventually experience the problem.  Between the iPod and Zune player populations alone, many may now be wary of Windows Home Server use until Microsoft can get to the root of the data corruption.