I just bought a Dell Server. I have had my eyes on a server for over six months now. It is going to be the other half of a pair of VMWare GSX Server hosts. It will provide a means for reasonable disaster recovery, a good deal of room for expansion, and the means with which to eliminate at least one physical server.
I originally spec'd the machine with dual 3.6Ghz Xeon's, 6gb of ram, four 146gb 15k drives, two 73gb 15k drives, and 3 years of gold service. The Dell website told me it would cost $11,000. That price was reached through the Wisconsin State Dell Store. The same machine configured through the Small Business store put the price at $12,500. The Medium and Large Business store didn't give me the options to configure a machine with the same specs. We ended up paying less then $8,000 after speaking with the Wisconsin Dell representative.
In a way, I like buying from Dell. It's always a pleasant surprise to spec a machine at the price I want to buy it at and have it cost much less. But it is also an exercise in abusive selling tactics. I really dislike it when companies screw with their customers.
I would love to be rebellious and say that I have no intention of purchasing from Dell again (this time I had no choice as I had to have a server that matched certain specs of my other VMWare Server host), but it is not quite that simple when purchasing for a university. There is political pressure to purchase from University approved sources. There is an economic advantage (Dell provides us excellent rates) of purchasing from the State's primary computer supplier. And finally, the State contract provides warranty and service from Dell that simply can not be had for a similar price.
One day when I actually put out most of the fires that are raging, I will have the time to persue purchasing from other vendors, perhaps whitebox ones where I get to choose the specific components.
