My dad has a G4 power mac and an iBook. He uses the G4 a lot at home and takes the iBook when he goes away on work. Is there any software/system where I can get the G4 to sync emails & schedules between the two? I know iSync does that but he's not prepared to pay $au200 annually for that service.
I was thinking of getting ADSL and a static IP and setting up a small win2K server with exchange and an imap service. That way he could use Entourage (which is excellent) to do this.

Does this sound reasonable?
Are there any other suggestions?

> I was thinking of getting ADSL and a static IP and setting up a small win2K server
> with exchange and an imap service. That way he could use Entourage

AFAIK, Entourage can't share or sync calendars (in any more complex a way than emailing appointments to other people) and I don't think it supports connecting to an Exchange server at all.

A web-based calendar might be a better solution.

iCal can support publish and subscribe on a WebDAV server, so that might be worth investigating.

MacOSXHints.com has this information on either free iCal posting services, or a link on how to set up your own.

Then IMAP for e-mail should do it.

If hes just sharing stuff between two computers why not use Outlook for Mac with Personal folders and just copy the PST file between the two to "sync". I.e. when he goes away copy the PST file to his iBook from his G4. You could use the same idea with any e-mail program with a calendar.. I think even Eudora has a calendar now. Exchange seems overkill in this case.. it's either a waste of money or another "legal risk" depending on how you acquired it.

Because Outlook for the Mac is an OS 9 only application that will probably not be updated to run nativly in OS X. He could sync the folder that contains all the information manually, but you runt he risk of accidently deleting or reverting to an earlier time this way.

Also, forgot to say this in the last message. Exchange does not work for Entourage beyond mail, and only when Exchange has IMAP enabled. Probably better to go with a free IMAP server that your father can connect to.