[Nottingham] Buying a server

[Michael Leuty]

I am planning to buy a small server for our church office network,
running CentOS 4 with mixed Windows/Fedora clients. This would
primarily act as a simple file/print server. I was thinking of buying
a cheap Dell server, with memory boosted to 1Mb and two 80Mb hard
drives so I can mirror the first drive in case of failure.

I should be grateful for advice on:
- does the spec look about right?
- is Dell gear generally reliable?
- is it worthwhile paying to extend the warranty beyond one year?

We've got a cheapo Dell server at work which has given good service
and not broken down since 400MHz was a shit-hot processor speed.

A church office is not a critical commercial environment, but it would
be inconvenient if the server were out of action for more than a day
or two.

-- 
Michael Leuty
Nottingham, UK