The Register is reporting that Microsoft is going to offer a cheap ($399) version of Windows Server 2003 to be used as a Web server. It’s limited in various ways, of course, to provide people with an incentive to buy the more expensive versions. Cheap is, of course, a relative term here when compared with Linux, and I think the goal here is strictly to avoid losing customers to Linux and to provide an affordable upgrade path for people who wouldn’t otherwise upgrade from whatever they’re running now (NT 4.0 or Windows 2000). If you’re just serving up Web content, there’s not much reason to upgrade your OS, especially if it’s going to be expensive.