July 18, 2005
Dell PowerEdge 2850 Ships with Plastic Bezel
Dell's PowerEdge 2850 sports a few aesthetic changes that aren't so great, most noticeably the disappearance of the metal bezel in favor of a plastic version.
Most of the changes to the Dell PowerEdge 2850 were probably not due to cosmetic reasons, at least that's what some of us are hoping. A prime example would be the reorganization of the of CD/DVD-RW and floppy drive arrangement to allow for an additional drive bay, allowing up to six (6) 300GB disks, yielding 1.8TB of raw storage. I'd hope that functionality comes first at Dell for all the aspects of their systems, although the jury's still out on that one.
The LCD display and power button have swapped over to the left side. The Dell logo is no longer illuminated in blue; instead there's a 1-1/2 inch slit off-center to toward the left side of the bezel. The bezel's composition has changed as well, from metal to plastic; though thankfully it's lock is keyed the same as it's predecessor (the 2650). So far the new bezels don't seem to have any affect on the environmentals of the server, either good or bad. If there's no additional gain due to improved heat dissipation, it's unfortunate that the metal bezels were a way to cut costs, since many customers liked the fact that the covers were solid. While not huge changes, it detracts from the appearance of a rack full of identically designed hardware. While not vitally important, the tours of the datacenter will probably be steered past mixed racks a bit more quickly.
Posted by alexm at July 18, 2005 08:02 AM.Send comments/suggestions to contact@moundalexis.com.
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