I've recently been engaged by the Small Business Server team at Microsoft to review and provide comment on the new SBS 2008. As part of that, last week I got a private demonstration of the updated product and information about Microsoft's roadmap and list of new and added features.

Today, they mailed an entire freakin server to my front door!

Major style points on the presentation, I'll admit. But, there's another reason why they chose not to merely point me to a download location for the software. This review of SBS 2008 is intended to be done from the perspective of the small business owner that purchases an OEM preinstalled version on workgroup-class server hardware. That preinstalled installation arrives with the OS and drivers already installed, and is intended to bootstrap the quasi-technical small business owner into server ownership.

I've merely got the thing out of the box at this point, so I haven't yet had the opportunity to see how the initial bootup configuration works. Once I get there, I'll report back with more information. What I can say is that from just the demos I've seen of SBS 2008, its console appears pretty slick.