Got my Win 2003 server disk for beta testing it a few weeks back. Installed it on a dual p3 500 xeon box to serve up a couple of my sites. Very impressive to say the least. I didn't serve any sites with any of the betas and basicly used for it for intranet testing. It is completely locked down after install. You have to enable the services you want to run. Configure your server manager starts at boot by default and is used to configure the services you want to run. I run http, dns and terminal services. After each service is enabled you then have to configure them to work correctly. Even after being enabled not all functionality is there until you use the snap-in to mange it. Enabling http will only enable serving static http pages. You have to turn on scripting and setup the permissions. You will get an insecure box only if you make insecure.
I also picked up the Web Edition. This edition isn't sadled with CALs and is much cheaper than Standard or Enterprise. It's target is people that would like to run Windows, but, don't want to pay the high price for the license. At $360US it's still out of some peoples price range, but, many people will start to use it. It's only a bit more than WinXP full version.
It runs very well. It looks like MS is heading in the right direction. Making a viable server platform that is much cheaper and secure out of the box than many free alternatives. While it might never replace the free alternatives it will definitely give Redhat and other enterprise server solutions a run for its money.
