HP Announces Policy Change Regarding MediaSmart Server Memory Upgrades From "The HP Insider: MediaSmart Home

HP Announces Policy Change Regarding MediaSmart Server Memory Upgrades

Based on customer feedback, HP will now offer a path for consumers to upgrade the memory on the HP MediaSmart Server without voiding the hardware warranty. HP customer feedback and research shows that some customers are installing multiple add-ins and/or additional software to the MediaSmart Server, which can lead to a need for additional memory.

Upgrading the memory, in and of itself, will not void the warranty on the MediaSmart Server. Damage to any part of the MediaSmart Server during the upgrade may violate the warranty, however, leaving the cost for repairs the responsibility of the customer. Customers should perform a backup to an external device before adding additional memory.

HP is only providing information on a customer memory upgrade path at this time, and customers will not be able to send their MediaSmart Server to HP to perform the upgrade. Customers may be able to find technical assistance for the memory upgrade, however HP is not recommending or training authorized resellers to conduct the memory upgrade on a MediaSmart Server. HP has not qualified any particular DIMMs, but compatible memory includes 1GB or 2GB - DDR2 667 MHz DIMMs. Customers should not upgrade beyond 2 GB of memory. Other than disk drives, HP does not support any other hardware upgrade paths, such as processor upgrades, on the MediaSmart Server.

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Matt Whitlock

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member since: 03/26/2008
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September 25, 2008 10:34 AM

That's great news. No doubt I'll be tearing into my MediaSmart Server and putting together MediaSmart Home how-to guide.

In the meantime, check out the how-to over at Home Server Hacks, which is quite helpful if you're looking to take the plunge: http://www.homeserverhacks.com/2007/12/upgrade-memory-in-your-hp-ex470.html

Served

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member since: 05/06/2008
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location: United States
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October 10, 2008 12:14 PM

A few comments regarding HP, their MediaSmart Servers, their policies and their partnership with Microsoft...

Some of this pertains to their policy shift regarding the memory upgrade, so I guess I'll praise and vent here.

I bought my EX475 in Jan '08. Out of the gate, I was very impressed. HP & MS had teamed up to produce a very nice package. Wondered why, when memory's so cheap, they put only 512MB in, but whatever. Remote access and downloading was so slow, it wasn't worth the trouble. I was embarrassed to provide access for friends & family. Being somewhat conservative, decided to wait until my warranty was up, then consider the upgrade.

The data corruption bug really put a hold on using the MSS like it could (should) be used. But PP1 came out and made things better. At the same time (and still) I continue to be aggravated, frustrated at the crappy remote logon process. Having multiple links a user must choose to logon is just simply bad. And once you're logged on one way, you're forced to logout and login again to access "the other" application. My question was posed during the Q&A with HP on whether this could be better coordinated and they said (and I paraphrase) 'we're looking into it.' So, that's still outstanding. Does this aggravate anyone else?

I recently took the plunge and updated the NIC driver. I had noticed that my version was very old (2006). Upgrading to the 3/3/08 driver provided a very noticeable speed increase. My beef with HP is them not keeping up with what should be routine software updates and notifying me that they're available and valuable.

Then, HP finally came around and reversed policy on the memory upgrade. Excellent! Kudos to a company that sees a deficiency in their product and does something about it. While making instructions and support available would have been ultimate, at least they made the correct overall decision. I upgraded two days ago. Combined with the NIC upgrade, my MSS now performs like it should. Even local access is fast - like server access should be. Remote access and downloading are now respectable.

So... this is turning out to be a very nice server to have -- almost. With more and more cool and valuable community add-ins available and when the logon debacle gets reworked, this will be a very nice server to have -- for real.

EX475