Arkay I understand and agree with pretty much everything you've said and I have no doubt that you and (a few thousand others around here) could set up all that stuff in a heartbeat given your training and passion for Linux as a workstation OS.
Problem is that I really can't be bothered trying to get my head around Linux and I don't have a the hours to spare each week for the next few months to figure out how to do everything you suggest, so from my perspective, WHS "appears" to offer what may be a far easier, almost plug 'n' play solution. It certainly has more appeal to me given it's features and expandability than those very finite, "toaster" style NAS boxes doing the rounds by Netgear & Linksys etc.
Now if it turns out that it won't handle divx and my mp3 collection is twitchy because they've turned Windows Server 2003 into a lite version of Vista - then I would definitely have to reconsider. But since they must be planning for it to be used by non-geeky consumers as a home media server populated by home videos of the kids and Aunt Marge and lots of ripped CD collections - I can't see them locking those file types out - if they did - what the hell would anybody use it for other than storing those other breaches of copyright files we all love so much - recorded TV ?
So sure, there'd be no doubt that a skillful system/server admin may be able to make his Linux box do more and do it easier and cheaper than a WHS might ever do - but not everybody is that capable or even so inclined.
That's an extra 1/2 cent
