My setup looks like this now: Google mail handles my domain email, forwarding all messages to my private box. It cleans out spam quite well, leaving me only an occasional spam to delete manually. Since Google provides both IMAP and POP access, I have set up small (128 Mb ram, 500 Mhz, $120, from Norhtec) appliance computer running Ubuntu. It downloads my email from Google mail and provides an in-home IMAP server (which I can also access remotely if needed, though that is infrequent).

On my in-home IMAP I can store private info I would never trust to Google as well. I use it as my information file system. In addition, all the regular email that came through Google is still available online from any computer on the web.

As for my personal OS, I too have found Ubuntu to be very satisfactory for most of my needs. I use VirtualBox to run WindowsXP as needed, within Ubuntu.

Incidentally, when people ask me for computer support, I usually avoid using Linux since I don’t want to become their only support option (too much work for me). But recently I was forced to choose between Ubuntu, or an illegal Windows installation (they had no disk and the machine was virus-ridden). So I’m giving it a try. Hope they will be happy…