I unwrapped the case, checked the key was there, and promptly logged onto my home PC and booted up the WHS Console. I spent a good 10 minutes looking around for the “enter upgrade key” box but couldn’t find it. Google revealed to me why I was unable to upgrade using just my product key, which I then later confirmed by looking into the help:

I guess I know what I’ll be doing the next time I get 2 hours spare.

Now it looks like the very-long-awaited Power Pack 1 (essentially a ‘feature and major bugfix expansion’ to the OS, not a service pack as it doesn’t just fix holes… some weird internal Microsoft terminology) is available for beta test.

They claim to have fixed the dreaded data corruption bug from the initial release, but are looking for beta testers to confirm their internal testing.

I’ve signed up but I don’t have long left on my trial so I’ll have to see how this will work.