I’ve been a little out of touch on computer prices, so I took the time to browse through the Dell leaflet that showed up in the mail. I got a surprise. [Updated. Daniel Sheppard writes in to point that I was fooled by the Dell leaflet—I looked again and it was incredibly misleading—the price in the “Windows” column below is the total price after you add Windows. In each case, the price for Windows is $1,099 (still seems kind of expensive). I fixed the table. It doesn’t prove much of anything any more. Dell leaflets suck. I suck.]
Once you buy anything from Dell, by the way, you can count on getting faxed and mailed on a regular basis essentially forever. The volume isn’t too high and it’s a good way to stay in touch with the market, so I don’t mind; but others might.
Anyhow, there is this one page that described their current blade-server offerings, with the pricing best presented in a table; dollars are Canadian and “Windows” means Windows Server 2003 (Standard Edition):
| Price | ||
|---|---|---|
| System | Hardware | Windows |
| 1U P4, 2.6GHz | $1069 | $1099 |
| 1U Xeon, 3.06GHz (dual capable) | $1859 | $1099 |
| 2U Xeon, 3.06GHz (dual capable) | $1979 | $1099 |
| 4U Xeon, 2GHz (quad capable) | $4859 | $1099 |
