Before I start, I will say that I am in no-way affiliated with Microsoft.
I'm currently using a self-built desktop (old AMD64) running Windows 7 RC (takes some getting used to, but is a great step in the right direction), a low-end Dell laptop running Vista Business (never had any problems with it at all) and a
Tranquil home server running
Windows Home Server. The desktop and laptop back-up their important files to the server via Microsoft's
Synctoy (Windows Home Server offers the ability for the computers to completely back themselves up, but I'd rather just re-install Windows from scratch and copy the important files back). Files that I want easy access to are managed by
Dropbox and off-site backups are performed using
Jungledisk on each machine, backing-up to Amazon S3.
Switch-on either the desktop or laptop and they automatically login to the home server. Jungledisk runs once an hour and does off-site backups. Dropbox does its syncing without asking. Synctoy runs once a day to backup files to the server. Each time I switch on my Xbox 360 to watch a video, the home server serves the files without complaint.
It all just works.
I've tried to love
Ubuntu and even went so far as to install Ubuntu desktop, syncing with
Ubuntu server (serving the xbox via
Twonky server), but it was all so fiddly and Ubuntu server would occasionally throw its toys out of the pram and fail to share its folders with the rest of the setup. After a while, there's only so much tinkering I can take before I just want the bloomin' thing to work.
So, I never thought I'd say this, but are Microsoft actually getting it right?