Got an N54L with Win7 on it and just replaced a synology NAS. Its amazing, use it as a vault, and an iTunes server.. You get more capability, such as preferred software and some future upgradability!
I have this thing called ProxmoxVE installed which is a free, open source server virtualization for running multiple different virtual machines. Theres loads of features and Its really cool to play around with, you can do stuff like set up different containers with different amounts of physical hardware available and also do things like make clusters with different physical computers. It's worth checking out if your looking for something interesting to put on your home server!
mine holds system backups for windows 8 pc < my sons, windows 7 pc mine, i also use it for media streaming and holding my game saves etc.. oh and the os is windows server 2008 its served me extremely well basicly its windows 7 lite... i can even save my xbox games to it aswell.
mine holds system backups, router back ups, a bit of automation (auto backups and updates) it works as my media server for the house and save back ups of my cctv before its sent to the cloud.
I have esxi on my server hosting multiple servers. Dc server, mail server, two mail encryption servers, two anti virus servers, altiris server, file server, media server, oracle and microsoft sql servers, teamspeak server, disk encryption server, website hosting server plus a few more
Mine is just mass file storage and I run Plex on it to stream films etc to my TV's on my home network, to my phone and now also amazingly Ive got the other halfs TV set up remotely on plex too.
I can do but I dont, 3G/H/H+ is patchy as fook where I am.
I do like plex when Im away staying in hotels etc though and still having acess to everything. The have a browser version too for laptops etc thats awesome
my server is just basicly mass storage serving all the computer in my house and computer backups and media streming to tv runing windows home server 2011