>So Ed, what do you think? Is it time to make my Dell 350 a server and get a new workstation? If get new one, what advantages do you find building vs. buying something like a Dell.
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For me, since I like hacking hardware, I build stuff. We build our servers at my office because we've got a fair amount of in-house expertise and a couple of great hardware vendors who stand behind their products, and we keep spares.

Workstations - we buy HP or emachine boxes at Staples, and add a NIC.

If you don't have an overwhelming need to play with hardware and don't want to spend inordinate amounts of time reading tech specs, buy from someone like HP, gateway or Dell, and add what you need. I've got more machines at home than appendages to run them, so if something dies, I have spares on hand. At work, if a workstation dies, I want it back up, NOW. I can't wait two weeks to amonth for a vendor to turn arouynd a repair, and out of warranty stuff genrally isn't worth fixing. We treat out of DOA exchange workstations as toasters; if one breaks, buy a new box for $600-800, and send the old one back for repairs. If we get it back in a month, we have a spare on hand when the next one breaks, or we send it home with someone. It's not worth waiting two weeks and spending $250 to fix a 200MHz Pentium with 32 MB and an old 2GB hard drive when I can buy a new 433MHz Celeron with 64MB and 8-10GB of disk for less than $800, and get a warranty on it as well.

Servers are another matter - I have my clients either buy a server box like an LH3 or NetFinity so that they can get service, or I spec the hardware and software very precisely and have the system built to spec. With server prices dropping rapidly during the past year, it's becoming less and less attractive to do this. I want the client to be able to get the server up and running oin less than a day if the building collapses on it. That means solid, complete backups, and service contracts with guarenteed repair turnaround times.

Again, I stay very up-to-date on the Wintel environment, so I'm willing to do things for myself or my own busiess that I can't in good conscience recommend to a client.

Rolling your own boxes where you don't cut corners to save a little money pays off well, assuming you have a solid feel for the environemnt. For example, I made the active decision to go with the P6DGS, with dual Ultra/Wide channels, rather than the P6DGU, using the faster Ultra2/Wide SCSI channel, because I already had a sizable investment in single-ended SCSI hardware and decided it made more sense to have two 40MB/sec channels than a single 80MB/sec channel that would get dropped to 40MB/channel the instant I put anything but an LVD drive on it. IOW, I could make an informed decision. I've made wrong decisions in the past and paid for it; I've a horrible track record on picking 3D video cards to run with NT...

If you want to spend the time digging around the innardsa and stay up to date, it's a fascinating hobby. Dell or gateway can take advantage of economies of scale and sell systems cheaper with the same components than i can buying stuff a piece at a time. And these guys aren't staying in business selling junk, or they'd have as little respect in the industry as people like Leading Edge...

>Pf
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>>>>Well, if anyone wants to see how Intel is going after AMD, and making us all regret buying our systems too soon, check out D-Day for Intel's Pentium III - 15 new processors, in speeds from 500-733MHz, at maddeningly low prices....