The Current Setup

Here's what I have at home right now:

Four windows client machines - one for each family member. Two run Win 2000, and two use Min ME. We plan to migrate one of each to Win XP (once I get the software from work).

An OLD PC (133 MHz) running Win 98 as my file server. Sure, it's slow as sin, and I have to reboot about once a week, but it was FREE! An almost full 20 GB hard drive holds the data.

An almost-as-old PC (233 MHz) running Mandrake 9.1. This is the IMAP server. I only installed Linux in character mode. I setup the IMAP software, configured the firewall, and added users. However, I'm the only person who logs in. In order to keep my email separate, I added a 'user' for each. Fetchmail gets the mail every 10 minutes. I also setup a SquirrelMail installation on the web server at work, which connects to this server. I played with Apache, FTP, and Samba a little, but the firewall currently blocks this traffic. All that is allowed is IMAP and SSH.

A Siemens router connected to the DSL modem. I've got it pretty well locked down. The only hole poked in the firewall is the IMAP port.

No wireless right now. All of the machines are in the same room ("The family that computes together - stays together") in the basement. I'll think about it when we get a laptop or want to setup a machine upstairs.