Did you know that you could run a simple, effective home with your Web surfing, telephone calling, TV watching, machine backups, book writing, code editing, music listening, game playing life, all on Microsoft products and all for a reasonable price? Over the next several posts, I want to cover how my family is using Microsoft technology to make our lives better. Today, I want to give a brief description of the home network.

Counting cell phones, my home network has seven computers in regular use. Four machines run Windows Vista. One machine runs Windows Home Server. The network layout looks like this:

As you can see, I run a lot of Microsoft software around my house. One thing my family has noticed is that the Microsoft software almost never gets in the way. All of the PCs run Windows Live OneCare for virus protection and Home Server Connection software for complete daily backups. The two laptops and the 500GB PC all run Office 2007. Both phones sync calendar, contacts, and files over Bluetooth using Windows Mobile Sync Center. Everything keeps itself up to date via the Microsoft Update Services.

This is an absolutely fabulous network, all running Microsoft products. In my next post, I will cover the greatness that is Vista Ultimate as nothing more (or less) than a home theater PC platform.