Managed Switch Question?

Depends. The Dell 52xx, 53xx, and 54xx switches are only layer-two switches, they cannot route between VLANs. If you are looking at the Dell line, the switch that can do routing (ie layer-three) are the 62xx (possibly 63xx now?) switches, but they are much more expensive.

Now of course you can create your own router on an external system by using Linux or xBSD or whatever. The cost of a basic PC + a 52xx switch may well be less than the cost of a 62xx switch.

If you are happy dealing with the routing yourself, I would say the 52xx will be sufficient.

Over the years I have deployed Dell 53xx and 54xx switches for use as VLAN-aware edge device concentrators, plus some 6224 switches for simple routes. For the most part have not had any significant problems with them -- we buy them new but have not had to have any replaced under the 3-year warranty they come with. We never decided if the 6224's ACL system was actually useful though, but for our current deployments we don't need them because we still have some Cisco 3750 switches.

The 53xx and 54xx have web interfaces (I have not touched a 52xx). The command-line isn't too hard to figure out, though -- usually if you do one example through the web thing, you can dump the text config to see how to do it through the CLI.

I like Cisco managed switches. If cost is consideration, as it seems to be, you might even reconsider why you want a managed switch. You can have multiple physical Local Area Networks.

For example, you buy or build a router and have it route the traffic between several switches. That's how everyone used to do it before VLANs. I have the hardware lying around to do this now, maybe you do too.