Accessing Email and Outlook

Need all emails received, organized, and kept in one central location

[rover]

I hope this is the right forum for this type of question... I have my main office, and also travel around a lot, using different computers at different locations. I would like to keep and organize all of my email messages on my main computer at my office, but be able to access it from anywhere through the Internet.

Would it make sense to host a Virtual Private Network for my Windows XP computer in my office (through a DSL connection), and then have it set up so that I can access Outlook from the web on any computer that connects to the Internet?

I think that way all of my emails sent, received and organized will always stay on the one central office computer, no matter where I access and send emails from.

But will that require that I would need to buy and install exchange server, windows 2000 server, etc.? Or can Outlook do this without the the extra server software?

If anyone has any advice about this, it would be greatly appreciated...

[bill]

Without Exchange it's pretty difficult to coordinate Outlook PST files. You're probably better off with a VPN. Take a look at secure services like GoToMyPC which are easy to setup and fast. A lot of the open source stuff is free, but often complicated to secure (depending on your setup and abilities.)

[stormy]

Have you thought about switching from POP to IMAP? I did that a few months back and it's saved my butt a lot of times!

[rover]

Thanks very much. I had heard of IMAP, but never really knew what it was about, or what it could do. After digging for some more information, it seems to be the best solution for what I need to do. Thanks again.