SBS Essentials is not available at Dell that I can see, a fact which is bemoaned here:
http://www.brucebnews.com/2011/08/microsofts-missing-servers/So when you say buy from Amazon you mean buy the Dell server with no OS and do the install. This makes me a little nervous that you have to setup the RAID yourself for example, and install all the drivers, but maybe it is not hard. I'm definitely used to getting the machine from Dell and just plugging it in.
The limit of 10 for Server 2008 Foundation might be too low, we have 9 client machines (max of 5 simultaneous users). Also this 2009 doc says Foundation is limited to a single processor and 8GB of ram:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744832(WS.10).aspx
What Dell offers today on a T410 is:
1) No OS
2) SBS 2011, Standard, $825
3) SBS 2011 PREM, $1489
4) Server 2008 Enterprise w/ 10 CALs, $2999
5) Server 2008 Standard w/ 5 CALs, $755
6) Server 2008 Datacenter, $5999
SBS Standard has CALs too but they are not mentioned.
With those choices only I'd say it's between SBS 2011 Standard and Server 2008 Standard. Bert was saying SBS is a no-brainer because it's easier to admin, etc.
Our clients are all XP and some even XP Home. We could upgrade to Win7 Pro as part of all this, but would be nice to decouple the two transitions. I don't know much about domains and active directory and stuff. Can SBS/Server just do workgroups as an option?
One thing I've considered is hiring an IT service to help spec the server maybe help with setup. I've done all the IT for my wife's practice for 4 years but that's was based on my experience as a consumer. I don't have any server experience.
