a void left by Dell discontinuing PowerEdge 1850

I was tasked to purchase yet another Dell PowerEdge 1850, to be dedicated to certain tasks currently done on some other-purposed server. The Dell account rep sent me an quote for PE1950, in response to my RFQ for an PE1850. I thought it is merely a typo, so I called him up. He told me, it is not a typo but that Dell decided to discontinue 1850, as the industry moves towards dual-core processors, aka, the new x9xx series for Dell PE. I told him that we can't go with dual-core processors, due to software licensing restrictions, since DBMS (Sybase & Oracle) will count each core as 0.8 CPU or so . We either go with single dual-core CPU (loss of redundancy and an underutilized 2-CPU license), or go with dual dual-core CPU ( now we need to purchase 1.2 CPU license to make up 3.2 CPU license instead of 2 CPU license). He informed me that the next best alternative for us would be 850, which only features Celeron processors.
This move contradicts Dell's intention to cater to SMB users, who use smaller boxen to house database applications whose licenses often involve CPU count. Not sure this void will be filled by Dell herself later, or by some third party such as HP. Either way, wish they had a published life expectancy for each model. So, you can make an informed decision when you starts. Case in point, I wouldn't buy six PE1850 last summer or Dell for that matter, if I knew then it will be discontinued only a year later or less.