First Impressions: Lenovo IdeaCentre D400 Home Server

Thanks to our fine friends at Lenovo, Tom on Tech has been able to get an IdeaCentre D400 for review. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be providing my thoughts as I use the server in my everyday computing. To provide some background on the IdeaCentre D400, here are some specs and other details about the server.

Lenovo ships two versions of the D400. Here’s how it breaks out.

 As you can see, both models are the same, with the only exception being the total storage space.

From the information that has been provided to me, the server does support 2GB of RAM maximum, however, I’ve read in the manual that opening the unit will void the warranty. I’ve asked Lenovo about this, and I will let everybody know what I am told.

With the IdeaCentre D400, setup was very straight forward. In the box was a quick setup poster, which not only included hardware setup, but initial server software setup (with screenshots!). While the screenshots on the poster are a bit small, I do like that they are included on the poster.

After installing the Windows Home Server Connector, Lenovo provides a utility that they call EasyAccess. After installing the utility, items are placed on the right-click menu that will allow you to right click on a file, and move that file to a shared folder on your Windows Home Server.

To see what, if any, extra software was preloaded on the IdeaCentre D400, I launched the Console, and was pleasantly surprised at what I saw. The only things that are preloaded are Lights-Out (from MVP Martin Rothschink), Lenovo’s custom tab, and FireFly Media Server (designed to stream music from the server to iTunes).

So far I’m impressed with Lenovo’s offering. I’ll be testing this server for awhile, so look for more hands-on information over the course of the next few weeks.