Home network email sharing

[Hazardsneon]

I have one laptop running XP home, one running XP pro and a PC tower that I'm using as a server type computer. I have an email account through my internet provider that I use for everything through outlook. What I would like to do is allow both laptops to access the email and have them be in sync. Previously, I've taken the OST file and saved it on my server PC and had Outlook, on my laptops, access it through a network folder. I was having issues with that setup with receiving emails so I abandoned that. Currently, I'm using IMAP setup but I'm not too fond of it either. Especially since I can't seem to get rid of the Personal folders in my Outlook.
Ideally, what I aspire to have is something similar to the exchange server that I have at work. The downside is that I don't want to have to purchase MS Exchange server. Is there a open source solution out there? Or am I going in the wrong direction?

[Shekka]

The simplest solution would be to set the same account (using a POP server) up on all three systems using thier own .pst file on each system and just checking the option to leave a copy of the email on the server. Then on your main system (or any of them for that matter), check the box to delete the email from your ISP email server after, say 10 days or so.

This way when you check the email on any of those three systems you will get all of your email.

The only down side is that by selecting the remove from server option after X days, is that you can not see all of you emails if you also use webmail. In that case if you want your emails there as well don't check the remove from server option.