hi. i do have a dsl modem/router that has 5 PCs connected to it. i do have an email account that i want everyone in this network to see it. all machines are running sarge. i would like on of the machines (192.168.1.66) to have direct access to updates and download the emails using evolution or thunderbird. all other machines instead of downloading the same files from the internet they could simply get it from the network, unless there is something machine specific. could someone tell me how to do it? all machines running sarge and they have thunderbird/evolution as email client.

I think you can setup an email server on one machine and download only the email from that one account to that server. Then set it up as an IMAP server and set all the clients to access that box using IMAP.

Here's a postfix/IMAP howto (it's part of a larger article on setting up Sarge for your own ISP hosting service).

Never tried it, but good luck!

what about the system updates? i do not want to download all machines the same updates from the internet. instead i want one to download and the when the rest do apt-get update to fetch from the other machine first

You'll have to setup a local apt repository on one machine. I've never done this, but here's a guide. Here's another. You might be able to automate some of it with a script.