[OT] Server choices?

[Rob Shugg]

Hey
My company is starting to think about buying some server hardware and I 
wanted to get some feedback on what makes a good server.
At the moment we are using an old pentium II on a transact connection for 
apache/python connecting to a MySQL server. The pages we are serving are 
quite processor intensive in that they can take up to 3 seconds each to 
generate. At this stage bandwidth isnt such an issue as we can upgrade as the 
need arises.
What I would like to know is, what do you really get when you fork out for a 
server as opposed to a standard pc? and what are the main questions you need 
to ask yourself in specifying one?

Thanks 

rob