Is it ok to run Windows 7 for a File Server?

Is it "ok" to run Windows 7 for a File Server, or is it recommended to use Windows Server 2008? Technically it seems possible, but the big reason to use Windows 7 instead of Windows Server 2008 is due to the much lower $$ price tag.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

Technically, it'll work and everything will run fine. I used to have Windows Vista on my home file server, and all was good. I guess it depends on whether you need to restrict permissions or not, but if the "file server" is part of your work domain, then you should be able to restrict folder access appropriately with Windows 7 as the OS.

Depends on the number of users who will access this. in Win2000/xp there was a hard limit on the number of simultaneous user connections, i think this limit was 10 users. So, look up on that before you decide.

The question is what kind of service do you need? If you want to share(smb) certain directories win7 is a viable solution, but if you want to run some kind of infrastructure services(dns, ad..) on it, might be a bad choice.