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Dell's PowerEdge 1500SC, a dual-processor midrange server with a base price of $1400, is available worldwide this week, the company has announced.

The server contains ServerWorks' HE-SL chip set, which supports an Intel 1.13 GHz Pentium III processor, and an Intel PRO/1000 XT gigabit Ethernet network connection on the motherboard. Standard features include ECC (error checking and correcting) memory, hot-plug hard drives and a hardware monitor that automatically reboots the system in case of a failure in the operating system, Dell said.

The operating system is not included in the $1400 price. Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, or Red Hat's Linux 7.2 can be factory installed at extra cost, the company said.

The HE-SL chip set supports three PCI buses (two 64-bit buses and one 32-bit bus), 4 GB of RAM and embedded dual-channel RAID (redundant array of independent disks) with battery backup. It is used in other models of the PowerEdge line, which was revamped last March. The most recent release, the PowerEdge 500SC, was unveiled in August.

Sniping at Sun

Dell Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell has promised to keep stoking the fires of its competition with Sun Microsystems with new products, despite the sluggish server market.

"[Sun] is the Apple of the server world," Dell said at the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas last week. The CEO charged that Sun has put itself in a similar position to Apple by keeping its Solaris operating system and UltraSparc chip technology proprietary. Dell clearly favors the lower-end but more widely used products from Microsoft and Intel, and charged that Sun is backing itself into a corner by moving away from these platforms.

Sun recently launched new low-end servers and cut the prices on its hardware to match that of similar products from Dell. Systems from Sun have typically been more expensive because of the high-end stability and performance features the company offers, but the company now intends to match Dell dollar for dollar on the low end.

Dell, however, was confident that his company can counter Sun's attack as Intel's 64-bit Itanium processor matures. When Intel releases its second generation Itanium chip next year, Dell will be able to compete on a more even playing field with regard to performance and also use the popularity of Intel chips to drive server costs lower, Dell said.

"Itanium will certainly help us push on the high-end," Dell said.

While Dell called Sun an "island" in the industry and said the company has some tough times ahead of it, he was not ready to predict Sun's demise just yet as some Itanium supporters have done.

Ashlee Vance of the IDG News Service contributed to this report.

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