Difference between Cisco 4500 and 4500-E switches

I thought the data sheets/web product page to be pretty detailed about what the E gets you.. This is more about hardware limits than anything software on it.

I'd imagine that they'll keep around the non-E series for selling the older Sup engines (ie. Sup II+, Sup IV and Sup V) systems that they still sell pretty well.

Once those go EOL, the non-E chassis's will probably as well.

If their marketing says the next generation of the series, its probably a safe bet that eventually the non-E systems will be EOL'd at some point in the future, but look how long a run they've had with this one so far. I can't see a change for a few more years yet.

The E-Chassis uses larger power supplies and a different fan in order to provide full PoE power to line cards. All of the 4500 cards will work in a

I had a quick look earlier and this is not quite correct.

-E 24Gbps per line card not-E 6Gbps per line card (from memory)

The -E has a much larger forwarding performance.

Other major thing is IPv6 in hardware (and maybe better QoS?).

You are correct, 24Gbps per line card is only supported on the E-series chassis but the other features (QoS, IPv6, etc) are supported by the Supervisor 6-E which is supported on both the Classic and E-Series chassis's.

I confused 4000 and 4500 series chassis with the 4500 and 4500E.

From the price list, the costs of the 4500 and 4500E's are exactly the same, which means there is no reason to purchase a 4500. I suspect that Cisco will announce EoS on the classic 4500 chassis within the next 6 months, but will provide hardware support/replacement for at least 5 to 7 years after EoS.

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Thanks. If there's no cost difference, then my decision is obvious: go with the 4500-E!