I decided to spend some more money in 2007 - especially since I returned the MarketingSherpa Landing Page Handbook and will have to count the refund towards 2007 and not 2008 from an accounting perspective. I mentioned several times already that I am running a server (Windows Server 2003) at home for my keyword and SEO related tools. The current server is an old AMD XP1700 workstation with 768 MB RAM. I built that machine myself in 2001 and it is surely getting old. So, today I went onto Dell’s website and played a little bit with the configurations for servers and workstations. Workstations can make great servers considering that you trade redundancy and server reliability a little bit towards price. But overall - if you plan and customize a workstation properly it makes a really great server at a lower cost. This usually works great for small businesses or home offices where you do not need all the bells and whistles of a real server (e.g. rack mounting, SCSI drives, dual or quad physical CPUs, hot swappable drives, etc.).

After browsing Dell’s website I ordered an OptiPlex 755 workstation from Dell’s Outlet store. The outlet store sells machines returned by other customers for various reasons. Dell then recertifies the machines and makes sure they are pretty much as new. At the end they deduct a certain amount of the price and sell the machines again. None of these machines extremely old or used a lot. I actually have not seen a machine that came from the Dell Outlet store that did not look brand-new and acted as if it would be new.

My requirements for a new machine were less on the consumer side, but on the business side. I wanted a strong dualcore CPU and at least 2 GB of memory combined with a SATA hard drive. I don’t care about Video card, DVD drive, or stuff like that too much. I think I made a good deal on this Dell OptiPlex 755. A newly configured machine of the same type came out at $940.00 + Tax + Shipping. My new system was priced at $569.00 + Tax + Shipping. The system features a Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6750 (2.66GHz, 4MB, VT, 1333MHz FSB) and 2 GB of RAM combined with a 160 GB SATA hard drive. This will make for a great work horse sitting in my basement crunching bits and bytes for me. I liked especially the 4 MB CACHE and the high CPU speed of the Core 2 Duo Processor. This will speed up some of my business processes from like a Yugo to a nice 5-Series Beamer (BMW).

So, if you are planning your taxes carefully, make sure you make final adjustments before the end of the year. My Dell order is confirmed to ship in 2007 and so is my credit card charged in 2007 as well. And due to the nature of this item and the existing tax law I can fully write if off in 2007 as a business expense (I love easy tax deductions). That’s all I needed.