Crazy: $349 = P4 2.8G, 256M

A friend called me this morning and told me Dell's big sale: DimensionTM 4600, P4 2.8G, 256M, 40G hard drive, (no monitor) only for $349. He will build a server and make fun of it.


Today is the last day of the sale.


He wants to know what's the difference between a "Server" and our pc. 5 years ago, a personal computer is not strong enough to support network application, and it's not stable enough either. So people have to spend 10 times the money to buy a special computer as a server. Now, things are different. A simple P4 2G is much faster than a duel Xeon 800 (This is the model I bought for a E-Commerce company 4 years ago). Also, Windows XP/2003, Linux are stable enough as a server operating system. The only problem is that whether the power supply and mother board is stable or not to run 24/7. But since the friend is not using the server for business, it doesn't matter if the server crashed :)


Yes, the computer is much faster then before. 7 years ago, 1997, I heard that 386 processor is faster than the computer which was used in NASA to push the Apolo to the Moon in 60s, then I knew I didn't need to buy a fansy computer anymore, what I need is to make software to make full use of the computer.


Yes, I'm still running a Pentium 100 at home.


(But it's better to have more Memory in that Dell computer. Let's say, 512M)