EDITORIAL - Don't let yourself get Scrooged!

So here it is - Merry Christmas. Deck the servers with boughs of holly, but don't set the halon off. Drink and be merry, especially if it's at the expense of the salesman from BloggsCo as he tries to get his sweaty paws on your IT budget.

But no matter how good the lunch - or if you're a real Network Pro, the high-level strategic fact-finding visit to 'demonstration test labs' in Hawaii - whatever you do, DON'T rush out and buy any new servers while enjoying the rosy afterglow of Christmas hospitality. It's not so much that you could end up with a technological turkey, but rather that you might miss out on a stonking bargain.

The bitter winds of change are blowing through the network industry and some of the main players will be left out in the freezing cold. The same can be said for the technologies that they championed. But, at the same time, an aggressive gang of wannabes is queuing up to be the new kids on the block.

In an industry where new technology has the shelf life of a mince pie, the difference between the quick and the dead can be impossibly close to call.

The server market is the area where we are seeing some of the most dynamic developments and the most aggressive marketing.

Even though Merced remains the ghost of Christmas yet to come, the server sector is being turned on its head in drooling anticipation.

Companies are reinventing themselves to get in on the party. The prospect of getting a share of the fabulously lucrative mid-range market - which was effectively the sole preserve of Unix - has prompted a whole raft of companies to roll out new server ranges.

The likes of Toshiba, Olivetti and Gateway have entered the fray and started to muscle in on the old guard of Compaq, Dell and co.

The pressure cooker has started to reach boiling point and there's a big server fight brewing. New ranges are crawling out of the corporate woodwork at an unprecedented rate. Even before Intel's super-chip hits the streets, there will be massive server bargains out there for the canny networking professional. Once again, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.