Advantages: Very low cost
Disadvantages: No potential

...If you are two users working from home, or you require a small good value box to act as a small scale scanned document server then this is the one for you, load it up with your favourite operating system, chuck it in the corner and away you go. i would however advise that you put in a second hard drive and at the very least run on a mirrored pair. At least that way if one drive fails you can carry on working whilst you wait for the replacement. When I think of server I think SCSI hard drives, fault tolerence and expandability of which this server has none by default and whilst IBM products are generally built to a high specification I have never been a big fan of using SATA drives where constant disk access is required. Likewise the celeron processor does not easily lend itself to blistering performance but, on the other side... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: reliable, customer service,expandable
Disadvantages: price,accessory

...The particular model my company own is an 8648-4AY It comes with: 1x Xeon 3.0GHz/800MHz (2MB L2 Cache), 1x 512MB PC2-3200 ECC DDR2 SDRAM RDIMM, No disks,1x Broadcom NetXtreme 5721 Gigabit Ethernet, 48x-20x IDE CD-ROM , 1x 530W Power Supply, SVGA (16MB) . What we have as accessories are: IBM ServeRAID-6M Ultra320 SCSI Controller( around £500) 3x146.8 GB 10 000 rpm Ultra320 SCSI hard drives( around £300 each) and a Remote Supervisor Adapter II card ( around £300 ). Packaging and User manual: The server comes with a very good package.User manual ( CD)and IBM Director software included. keyboard and mouse included.The user manual is very good and include details about connections,set up and enviromental set-up ( noise generated,heat and cooling requirement) Set-up: For our particular configuration , we had to create the disk subsystem... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: power,redundancy,expandibility
Disadvantages: Price

...The configuration I use is : 2x Xeon 3.6GHz/800MHz (1MB L2 Cache), 4x 512MB ECC 133MHz SDRAM,48x-20x IDE CD-ROM drive, Dual Broadcom 5721 Gigabit Ethernet, ATI Radeon 7000M, IBM 5U x 24in Tower To Rack Conversion Kit ,5x146.4 GB 10 000 rpm Ultra320 80-pin hard drive,Serveraid 7k SCSI raid card, Remote supervisor Adapter II card. Operating System provided by IBM as well ( part number 90P0221) Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, Standard Edition. Packaging and manuals: Server is very well packaged,rack conversion comes with explanation for conversion, but the whole conversion is not intuitive at all.Picture provided in installation instructions not very helpful. Bit and pieces included in the packages ,as keyboard and mouse for Server.IBM Director and Serveraid manager CD, plus OS CDin the box, OS pre-installed. Set-Up. Set up is quite easy... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Silence, Sturdiness
Disadvantages: Swapable drives, all drivers needed

...The IBM T20 Thinkpad is the perfect choice for the non-gaming experience. I should say that you will find everything you need in this machine, unless you are in to firewire devices. As an example I should mention the Ultrabay to which you can even get a DVD-RAM drive (which by now is the newest technology). However. Never laptops are fitted with USB2 (faster version of USB) and some of them Pentium-M processors (longer battery life). The T20 runs perfectly with Windows XP, but you will have to install all drivers from IBM - especially the power management drivers, since you elseway will not be sure to return properly from stand-by mode. The rather old 440-chipset is running at it's best, and the speedstep is fully functional (that is: The PC uses the exact amount of CPU-power needed). Though the IBM TP X-series are way more portable... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: good build quality - rarely break down - It's an IBM!
Disadvantages: support website can sometimes be awkward to navigate.

...that once the initial information has been entered it's pretty much an automated process. Once your up and running you can install the included IBM Director software (it is included with all the servers I have ever bought but I don't see it on the kit list so might be wise to check, although even if it isn't you can download it from the IBM website. The easiest way to find it is search the IBM website or Google for e1cd1.iso. You should also download the serveraid windows agent as well ) which monitors the state of all your hardware and can be configured to send E-Mail or pager alerts in the event of warnings errors or security breaches. As a terminal server it should be good to go for up to 15 users (maybe 20 with plenty of RAM and if only using office docs) but I would probably go for an X236 if you want to do much more than that or have... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Very versatile mid range server
Disadvantages: support web site can be awkward to navigate

...GB 15K disks for the data configured as RAID5 (with the addition of an IBM 7k RAID card) with a hot spare. This gives a 73GB OS partition which should be ample for most SBS installations including the exchange store. I tend to find that most SBS base builds come to about 20GB once everything is installed. This leaves just over 50GB for the exchange store and page file. The data partition would then be about 250GB which should be ample for most SMB's. Inside the server is just as good and as this model has the dual power supplies installed I would imagine it also comes with 6 cooling fans. If you see a cheaper price for the same model make sure it has dual supplies. There is a thick perspex cover directing air from 2 of the fans over the CPU and memory slots whilst two fans at the bottom suck air through the hard drive bays... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Powerful - impressive - cutting edge
Disadvantages: Like a big filing cabinet on wheels

...such as archived mailboxes and the like. It has a capacity for 12 300GB SAS drives giving 3TB of storage if required. The high vis neon green drive lights were constantly flashing on and off on the one I built because the RAID card is constantly performing data scrubbing which monitors and repairs any errors it finds in the stripes on the array. Apparently all the RAID cards IBM supply do it but only the 8i card has the ability to flash the disk lights whilst it does it which I find kind of bizarre. Above the drive bays is the CPU tray which, once you have removed all the relevant clips and air channels, can be slid out of the front and up to four processors can be plugged in. Reseat this board and move into the area behind where the CPUs sit to the memory area. The memory is plugged into what are effectively daughterboards each of which will hold 4... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Reliable, fast, robust
Disadvantages: A bit heavy... but doesn't matter once it's in the rack

...I have recently installed a couple of the IBM x445 servers at work, and as I've been generally impressed with the way they've performed, thought I'd share my findings. I won't go through the finer and minute technical details of this server simply because that wouldn't be a review- that would be simply copying the specification, which anyone can read anyway. I decided it be a lot more helpful to describe in business terms the benefits of the server, and how reliable and effective it has been in our infrastructure. Nevertheless, some bare technical details should be discussed- so in essence, let me point out that it comes with 2Gb of RAM and 2 Intel Zeon processors running at 2.5 GHz. It has the capability of using up to 64Gb of RAM (if you should ever really need to). There are the usual slots available for adding SCSI hard disks... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: far more than just an email client
Disadvantages: requires specialist support and setting up

...client, Notes can connect to the standard internet type mail servers, using POP3 and SMTP. This ignores the real power of the software. It can also be used as a web browser, however it was never really designed to act as your 'main browser' and tends to be rather slow and cumbersome at this task. To gain the full advantage of Lotus Notes you need a 'Domino' server - it provides the required infrastructure to share and distribute information, and most importantly, index all the documents and attachments. Lotus was bought by IBM in the 1990s and plays a central role in IBMs marketing strategy. All of the key platforms IBM makes support Domino servers, including xSeries (NT servers) pSeries (RS/6000 AIX Unix servers) zSeries (System/390 mainframes) and iSeries (AS/400 minis) - and Linux. For a company to devote that degree of effort... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Hugely versatile system
Disadvantages: Not as well known as it should be

...The IBM iSeries is a computer architecture focused almost entirely on running business applications in a low-maintenance multi-personality environment. It has it's roots based firmly in the mid 1970s, and first emerged as the System/38 launched in 1979 - that isn't to say it's an old-fashioned architecture - far from it, in fact the rest of the computing indu