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Servers: Who Needs Them?

Hewlett Packard's e50 is just one in a wave of servers aimed at low-end users. As a group, these machines are both cheaper and more powerful than the entry-level servers of yesteryear. Their combination of a PII-300 or -333, 64MB of RAM, and 4GB hard drives should provide plenty of horsepower--and breathing room--for small businesses (up to 50 users) that want to share files and printers, send e-mail, and deploy small-scale shared applications such as accounting or a basic intranet.

On the other hand, if you have more users connected, run more-demanding applications (such as a full-fledged corporate database), or want to use the box as an Internet server, you should bump the RAM up to 128MB or 256MB and increase your hard drive capacity. And if you expect your business eventually to comprise more than 100 PCs, or if you plan to keep adding network-based applications, consider starting with a midrange server, currently priced at around $4000 to $5000. Otherwise, one of these low-end servers could be just what your business needs to get its network out of ad hoc.