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I have an old Laptop that requires a Windows OS licence. It appears that Windows Home Server 2011 is about half the price of a Windows 7 licence, so my question is if it is suitable to be used in place of Windows 7?

My hardware specs are reasonable, Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz, 4Gb ram. I know a lot of people use Windows Server 2008 as a desktop OS, so are there any restrictions in Home server that would prevent this kind of use?

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WHS 2011 is not designed to run software on it. Windows Server in general is not designed to run software on it. – Ramhound Dec 16 '11 at 17:19
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My gut wants to say "No, this is a bad idea -- there's probably too many things that are missing or won't work, software that will fail to install on a 'Server' OS, and features and design that are different enough to be a constant headache for your users." However, I don't have any real proof of it, but at the same time I can't find any references to anyone running WHS 2011 as a desktop OS either. This is as opposed to running Server 2008 R2 as a desktop OS, which plenty of people do for various reasons (some good, some... not so good).

While it may or may not work for personal use I'm not sure I'd want to deploy something like that to other users, particularly if they're not tech-savvy.

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As with any windows os there is the one and only problem is driver support. If you manage to find the right "Windows Home Server" drivers for your laptop you can try to install. If that fails I suggest you give Ubuntu a try.

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No. I would NOT recommend WHS as a desktop OS. There's a reason its about 1/2 the price of Windows 7, and that's because it lacks many of the features of Windows 7 or other desktop OSes. WinServer 2008/2003 are good for desktop OSes due to stability, and they share the same drivers as Windows Vista/XP, and professional level programs (ie Visual Studio) do not mind running on servers

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Can you give a specific example of a missing feature? Are you suggesting that WHS is not stable? – Jay Bazuzi Nov 12 '11 at 17:51
I was thinking of WHS 2003 for most of my arguments. All I can think of that has written proof is that there is no support for MSE without hacking – Luke Nov 12 '11 at 18:50
Isn't WHS 2011 based on Windows Server 2008 R2? – Andronicus Nov 14 '11 at 8:54
@Andronicus Yes, it is – Luke Nov 14 '11 at 15:52
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