Saw this a bit back. Thought the community might be interested due to all the speculation concerning Media Center integration.

Fake photos is my take.

No, its legit.

Too bad they decided to take all the media center functionality out of it. No more "softsled". For some reason, giving 95% of customers what they actually want seems to be beyond the ability of the eHome PMs. 

 Yes...WE WANT CENTRALIZED MEDIA STORAGE of CABLECARD RECORDED TV. Yes, WE WANT TO WATCH RECORDED SHOWS ON ALL SYSTEMS IN OUR WIN7 HOMEGROUP. No, we don't want to rely on crappy, slow  "extenders". Yes, we want the ability to NATIVELY watch MKV containered content.

Oh..and working with OEMs to allow RAID will encourage systems with more than 4 HDDs.

How hard is this to understand?

Not posted on any WHS sites and did MS use the codenames in other versions like this?

Give me some links, if it is legit.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2463/3641643490_94145b41fe_o.jpg

One of the shots seems a little too similar to this photo.

 Assuming those are real it doesn't mean that media center is not in there.....  infact there are a lot of things not shown in the new dashboard that exist currently. 

walkabt:

Not posted on any WHS sites and did MS use the codenames in other versions like this?

 

Give me some links, if it is legit.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2463/3641643490_94145b41fe_o.jpg

One of the shots seems a little too similar to this photo.

 

 

What's google Bob?

Those are all torrrents, which I don't go to, and this thread.  I did a search - that's why I asked for something more concrete. 

*sigh back at you...*

walkabt:

What's google Bob?

Those are all torrrents, which I don't go to, and this thread.  I did a search - that's why I asked for something more concrete. 

*sigh back at you...*

It was posted on we got served earlier this week, but it was taken down. I don't know who pulled it. There's no way to really know for sure if it's legit or not, but these are the same pictures that were posted on wegotserved. I don't really think it's legit. The person who posted them on wegotserved was asked to post addtional screen shots of the dashboard which of course he didn't. It was pulled shortly after that...

Just checked the wegotserved forums this morning. They pulled it because it violates thier TOS. They have a section in the forum for Vail now. Someone actually installed it on a machine to run it, and they like it so far, but they are not allowing any disscussion at this time because nothing has been officially announced by Microsoft. The OP asked if he could talk about it and the mods said no. I guess there really is a torrent floating out there of build 7630.

What is the point of someone going to the trouble of creating all those fake screenshots? What purpose would it serve. Looks genuine to me. Although from the surface it looks as if really there is nothing new other than using a different drive letter for each type of content rather than having them all under one as before. They will need to add some genuinely new and interesting new features (TV Tuners/Media Center?) to encourage people to upgrade.

 Without Softsled, and without an Extender strategy (sans Xbox 360), WHS+MCE isn't very appealing.

Don't forget the rumours of a 'Premium' and 'Standard' version of WHS that floated a while back. This could be the standard version, similar to 'Win 7 - Home Standard' without the MCE components. For people or businesses that will use the MCE components, they purchase the Premium version. It sounds very Microsoft to me.

So, that's supposed to be the version of WHS built upon Server 2008 R2? Does that mean it will support a real domain, and not a WHS homegroup?

 It is still a home OS, I doubt domain's will be involved.