You might have better luck just running Linux.
I have Ubuntu 11.10 and it can not see the Lumia 800 other than just charging via USB. Skydrive seems like the only solution without Zune.
The only thing I miss about Android or BB: no proprietory app needed to read the phone. However, the pluses of WP7 out weigh the single minus over-all
That may or may not work for him. In one post he says he has windows 2003 in another post he says he has windows 2008. I am not sure he knows what he's running. If he's running windows 2003 he probably only has USB 1.0 or 1.1 support
even if he got it to detect mass storage (sometimes working and mostly not is an issue with W2K3) the next hurdle is the waiting all day for the ungodly slow transfer speeds
Syncing musics and videos via Zune is annoying to me. The trick I use is to "enable" USB drive mode for my phone:
Windows Phone 7 USB Mass Storage Hack
However, please note that I'm not sure if this workaround works for you. It might not because your machine doesn't recognize the device in the first place.
It wouldn't be any slower on Windows server 2003 than on any other version of Windows. It should be faster than 7/Vista based on their history with poor drive access anyway.
Anyway, I can upload to Skydrive if I go to the pictures menu and don't use Zune. I kept using Zune and not having an option, and the Skydrive app won't let me select videos to upload so I did not think I could. Sooner or later, I will get my own computer and I believe I will be able to get it working with Windows 2008 server a lot easier.
I'm new to the WinPhone I agree that I like how the Android is plug and play with USB on any computer for sure, but I really do like my Windows Phone so much better than any Android I've ever used there really is no comparison.
I've heard of this issue. This is just generalizing the problem. For a very large amount of people its PIO issue, people using SMART, Avira was a well known culprit, BIOS settings, etc.
here is HD tune on my Windows 7 X64 setup.
HD Tune Pro: WDC WD1600AAJS-00B4A Benchmark
Test capacity: full <- 160gb
Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 45.5 MB/s
Transfer Rate Maximum : 111.2 MB/s
Transfer Rate Average : 89.7 MB/s
Access Time : 15.9 ms
Burst Rate : 173.5 MB/s
CPU Usage : 4.0%
Feel free to compare this to Windows XP Sp2 benchmarks.
I'll get you started.
AnandTech - Western Digital WD1600AAJS: 160GB Served on Single Platter
As for that USB hack be careful what you do. If you ever use that phone with Zune after using the USB hack it has potential to cause Zune to throw a fit.
Motherboards / drive controllers can play a huge part in drive speed, as well as the CPU. Even more so with RAID. You can't just compare to some guys review of XP and assume it's faster because yours is faster. In short, I almost always get better numbers than reviews of the same drives. Does this mean I'm comparing apples to apples? When done on the same hardware with the same exact settings, Windows 7 and Vistas lose pretty badly in comparison to XP or server editions. I've even done some tests myself across OS's, and can verify. Granted, this is also assuming drivers are equal as well. Newer hardware may never see the best driver support for XP/2003.