Hello,

the goal is to make the setup easy and as architecture independent as possible.

I'd like to share my e-mail and PIM between these 3 elements in a resonable and ergonomic way:
- DESKTOP PC - a powerful PC running RH linux with quick, however NATted connection to Internet, thus no chance of direct incoming mail relay.
- NOTEBOOK - a bit outdated machine, but still running Win XP pretty fine
- PDA - for the moment an ancient PALM, but might easily change to a PocketPC with WinMobile

At the moment, I download all my emails from several POP accounts at different servers solely into my DESKTOP PC. I use Mozilla Mail as my MUA and currently have around 0,5 GB of sorted e-mails which I want to keep. On NTB I just use the option of leaving POP mail on server, when I'm on the road, but this does give me access to new e-mails only.

Now, I'd like to share all the mails residing on my PRIMARY PC with my NOTEBOOK and a small portion also with my PDA. Network connection between all 3 elements is running fine + all these can easily connect to Internet independently.

I've come up with a solution like this:
- Import current 0,5 Gig of Mozilla e-mails to a locally setup IMAP server on DESKTOP PC <-- is this possible at all?
- while working at DESKTOP PC autofetch i.e. via fetchmail all mail from ISPs' POP accounts to my own local IMAP server
- let my NTB synchronize with those IMAP folders.
- the same synchro would also do the PDA.
- while on the road, make sure the DESKTOP PC is off (I always tend to forget it running, thus fetchin' all the mails before my NTB or PDA has a chance of seeing them :mad
- and download all POP e-mails from ISPs' servers to either PDA or NTB
- when back at home, synchro all mails downloaded into NTB of PDA back to the primary repository IMAP server on DEKSTOP PC

As an addition I was dreaming of having a simple PIM or Groupware shared between those elements too, including large directories being automatically diffed or synchronized
Currently I just use PALM device itself and J-Pilot on linux DESKTOP for this, leaving the NTB out of the play, because PALM can't easily synchronize with two desktops.

Thanks anyone brave enough to read all the way through my question or more or less a RFC

So what do you guys think, is the proposed setup the best solution?

Why not use Evolution instead?

It's basically an Outlook clone, with e-mail, PIM, palm sync. etc.

It's a tremendous app, thanks for pointing it out. I was always too KDEcentric to spot Evolution. Probably the easiest approach to having very similar groupware suite on both windows and linux machines.

However it won't save me from having an IMAP server for all the synchro work. Or worse, depending even on M$ Exchange server.