With its raw performance and unmatched manageability features, the Dell PowerEdge 2850 made our decision quite simple. While it's hardly a budget server, this 2U box provides a lot for the money. Companies going with the 2850 can expect to see impressive enough overall throughput on large rollouts to justify each unit's price.

On the performance side, the combination of fast 15,000-rpm hard drives and a RAID controller featuring new DDR2 memory served the Dell server well, as did the PCI Express–integrated Intel Gigabit NICs. Although we'll have to wait for PCI Express slot support, the 2850 can take full advantage of the plentiful PCI-X cards available today.

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Dell's manageability was more than just a neck ahead of the competition, too. Combining an innovative remote-access card, a full LCD status panel, and OpenManage software, the 2850 will likely be praised by any tech or admin who works with it.