imap email with pop3 account on windows server

[SelArom]

I have a hosting account for my website selarom.com, and of course I have my email account set up for it. I can check my email in outlook by connecting to the smtp server, which is fine, but I like the idea of imap, so that I can check my mail at work, home, school, web, etc.

I have a box running windows server 2003, and I know it has imap and pop3 support, but I don't really understand how they would work if my host for selarom.com is on an offsite server. is there anyway to configure my windows server machine to connect to my pop3 account for selarom.com, and instead of having my laptop connect through outlook to download my mail, it would go through my windows box and use it as imap instead?

I can install exchange on it (i have msdn access through school) but I haven't had much luck with that in the past... but is that the way to go? I would love to have it store all my info like tasks, appointments, etc so I can access them at work and sync them to my pda and all that great stuff...

i know this is a lot to take on for someone as inexperienced as I, but I do want to LEARN! so I guess if someone can point me to an online resource (that is hopefully not TOO technical) I would appreciate it! any insight you can provide that will help me do what I'm trying would be great.

thanks!
-SelArom

 

[nweaver]

really, exchange isn't too bad. There are several GREAT guides and howto articles from MS, and it's hard to beat for enterprise stuff. Experience with it is good, and if the only person who you can mess up is you, then it's a good time to learn.

It might be easier to run SBS server then raw exchange (I don't recall if my MSDN allows access to SBS or not, we have just used our action pack licenses the 2 times we needed it).

If you want to do this, I would start by getting your windows box on a live IP, installing exchange normally, and setting up DNS to point to it as your primary MX record.

 

[SelArom]

thanks for the advice. I've actually installed exchange on my windows server a few times just to mess with it and it was indeed only me who messed it ip

I wanted to try sbs but unfortunately no I don't have access to that one with our license

and I thought about putting a static ip on the server, but that would mean that I'd have to host my whole site selarom.com from it and I don't want to do that because a) I'm already paying for hosting and b) i'm only on cable which limits me to 384k upstream and that's suck for hosting a site. i don't want to make another email address either

oh well i will continue researching my options thank you for your help

-SelArom

 

[nweaver]

no you don't. You just need an MX record for your exchange/mail server, and then point the root of the domain and/or www record to your current web host.