HP MediaSmart EX495
Microsoft's first (and so far, only) attempt to break into the then much smaller "home NAS" market. (Ironically Synology was founded in the year 2000 by an ex-Microsoft employee)
The EX495 and its brother?...cousin? whatever. The Acer EasyStore (along with several other devices that I don't own) were a fleet of home NAS appliances sold by large OEM's for consumers.
The main selling point (I guess?) was the inclusion of "Windows Home Server". A re-skin of Windows Small Business Server 2003 with a web UI and some PC administration software attached. Unsurprisingly both of these features are long-defunct now
The HP is significantly more capable than its Acer counterpart. Its stock configuration can be modified with a larger PSU, additional RAM can be installed and the miserable stock Celeron 420 CPU can be replaced with a much more capable Core 2 Quad Q9550s (the S is important as it needs to be low power!) or an equivalent Xeon if you prefer.
To that end the unit I own (pictured below) is currently outfitted with all of the described upgrades. I have also replaced the rear case fans with 92mm Noctua fans for extra quietness
At this time the unit is not currently in active use as I do not have 3.5" hard disks to install into it. Due to the age of the system it also does not support 2TB+ (GPT formatted) disks without swapping the OS for Linux or similar
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