“In fact, it is amazing that such a small box can be a server
and be so easy to use. At a price around $895, it costs less than
some laptops. Of course, when you see that price, the first thing
you have to wonder is what’s missing…and many things are. There’s
no monitor, keyboard, mouse, tape drive, CD-ROM drive or floppy
disk. But through clever design, it doesn’t need any of those
things.”
“Rather than dwelling on what’s missing, it’s more important to
know what it has. The server runs on a 275-MHz StrongArm processor
and has two Ethernet ports-one is a 10/100-Mbps port, the other a
10BASE-T port. It also has a serial port so you can connect a
standard or ISDN modem. If you need a keyboard, mouse and monitor,
connections are available for these devices on the back of the
unit. The server we tested included 64 MB of RAM and a 4-GB hard
drive. You can pay more and get up to 128 MB of RAM and a 10-GB
hard drive. Rebel.com says it will offer a 25-GB drive in the near
future. In its fully loaded configurations, OfficeServer can serve
up to 100 users, according to Rebel.com. However, your actual
mileage may vary-in this case, depending on what exactly it is the
100 or so users are doing….”
“OfficeServer meshed well with our existing Internet-enabled
applications. Dropped into our network to fill in for the
FreeBSD-based Internet server, the OfficeServer was well-behaved
and predictable. It routed e-mail with no changes to our e-mail
clients. It looked like another NT server for print and file
sharing. No one complained about its performance.“