Top 10 Windows 7 Features #10: Homegroup networking
The real payoff from homegroups comes in the form of libraries, which is Win7's new aggregate view for shared system folders. Under this system, like content from multiple locations can be made accessible from a single resource to all members of the homegroup. While it seemed to make sense at first to segregate content in a home network in accordance with how accounts are allocated, the way things ended up, keeping track of locations as well as categories ("Pictures of Dad belonging to Jake," "Pictures of Dad belonging to Dad," etc.) became too much of a headache...the kind with which Vista eventually became permanently associated.
Perhaps the true test of homegroups' and libraries' usefulness in Win7 will come with the new Windows Media Center for Home Premium and Ultimate users. Currently in Vista, WMC enables you to set up "watch folders" throughout a home network, presumably with the idea of being able to automatically enroll new content as it enters folders everywhere in WMC's purview. The problem is, not only is WMC watching those folders, but so are you, so you end up having to traverse the network directory tree to locate what you wand -- not unlike playing a game of Frogger blindfolded.
Under the homegroup system, libraries that aggregate content throughout a homegroup will be visible to the new WMC as a single source. You want videos, you go to "videos." And conceivably (this is something I'll have to see myself to believe), a PC running the new WMC will be able to stream content from any member of the homegroup, to any member of the homegroup, almost as though WMC were a passive server.
If you're a Media Center veteran, you may already be hearing the comfortable plinking sound of unspent coins being returned to your piggy bank. There has actually been a cottage industry in Media Center Extender devices being sold to individuals who, technically, didn't actually need them. The MCE is supposed to make networked devices accessible to WMC, and some devices like external hard drives do so legitimately. But many such devices -- especially the ones that promise to stream photos, music, and videos to any PC in the house -- are essentially stripped down Wi-Fi adapters, some of which are being purchased by folks who already have Wi-Fi adapters.
In a homegroup-endowed world, these particular customers would not need MCE devices; they'd use the routers they already own to let Windows do the job that it was supposed to do in the first place.
From the perspective of a Windows engineer, the biggest barrier the homegroup system may overcome is that of enrolling portable PCs as homegroup members while they're in the home, and yet enabling them to be domain members while they're in the workplace. Even with Vista, this was essentially impossible even though its newer TCP/IP stack included setup for alternate IP locations. I personally wrestled with this issue to no avail; at present, it's impossible for a business' laptop PC that uses a VPN to also be a member of a local Windows 3.11-style workgroup; it can be one or the other, but never both.
The promise of Windows 7 is that laptops may be transported to work, become "business PCs," and be enrolled with all their enterprise-level Active Directory privileges; then be taken home, become "home PCs," and be open to all the family's shared files, aggregate libraries, and other conveniences; and ne'er the twain shall meet. This will be an extremely tall order, which if fulfilled, will be fabulous: Corporations' policies for the use of company equipment, or even personally-owned laptops with access to company resources, only tightened during the Vista era.
If the computer truly is the network, as folks like Bill Gates have been saying for decades, then perhaps part of what had been plaguing Vista all this time is due to home users' perception of the task of networking. The homegroup system is a big gamble to address and solve this perception problem, and with all its promise, it can either succeed spectacularly or fail spectacularly. We'll probably be seeing some of the spectacle long before the final release date.