lol, yeah. From what I can remember of the time, back then, Dune2 never really got advertised/reviewed as heavily as C&C:Tiberium Dawn did.
C&C got the mix of balance, play, UI and story down very well. There were some issues in the balance, in that Nod were slightly underpowered in units (but a good tactician could overcome that), and the delivery rate on new vehicles (if you were on a largeish map, and your runway was over on the "west" edge, you could have 1 delivery plane incoming, and 1 in the queueueue, so there was a bottleneck).

There's a thing called Dune 2000, which is supposedly an updated version of Dune 2. I haven't played it myself, but I hear it's quite good. Maybe worth a try?

It is. It's basically Dune 2 HD. Better 2D graphics and the exact same gameplay as Dune 2. It beats the later installment Emperor: Battle for Dune by a mile.

Dune 2000 is indeed worth a try and yes, it's an updated version of Dune 2, which is very similar to C&C. However, I wouldn't agree with Stonebro when it comes to Emperor: Battle for Dune. It's one of my favourite games and it has many very interesting features. I believe my favourite is the non-linear campaign. Since virtually all games nowadays are console s*hit designed for morons by EA and Micro$oft, I remember the times I played games like Dune with nostalgia.

...it is also my opinion that Dune 2000 is 'nicer' than Emperor. Basically, there's a nice story (diferentiated somewhat between each of the 3 factions missions) and a similar tech tree for all, but with simple key diferences/units. These subtleties add to the somewhat classic RTS formula initiated by Dune 2, and used ever since. (in truth Dune 2 was a golden ticket on the original Dune's best feature: the tactical mode where you'd control some platoons of fremen i believe - or was it Atreides troops?)
Then, Emperor... that cashed in on the 'new' fashion in RTSs wich was to include mech in every goddamn game, even if heavy mechs walking over SAND aren't all that plausible. All of a sudden, mech are cool again (what?) and everyone has to have them on game. Then there's the stupid superweapons, that aren't super at all, and worse of all IMHO the somewhat limited use of the Dune universe... the 3 campaigns used a non-linear map the player could choose from, but it was a desguise for a very limiting skirmish based campaign, and all campaigns moved almost exactly alike... when i had to blow stuff inside a Guild ship for the 3rd time in the game... come on! And all the rest! And the fact Dune is actually a rich 'political' sci-fi novel and pretty much of it is missed on these games, save maybe the original (that i haven't personally played yet). Emperor had some good elements in it too, but IMO the 'silly' ones out-weight the good ones...
On note, Dune 2000 and Emperor have especially nice soundtracks, especially Harkonnen ones, if you're into electric guitar... search for that on the net :]