Very simple problem:
I was on vacation for 10 days and my DSL email account (pop email)
overflowed after 5 days (disk quota of 5MB exceeded) and cost me a
great deal of lost emails and business.

Moreover I had to call them up from the Islands just to tell them to
remove files that were not important.

VERY stupid when you consider that 5MB of disk costs less than $0.01
I then tried myay.com and yahoo.com and even paid 20$ just to have
more space
but found that having multiple emails is a pain (even if you let
myway.com read pop emails).


ANYHOW what I need:

a software program on my HOME computer (DSL connected) that would act
as a mail server taking emails from DSL provider. Then I would like to
be able to read these email stored on my computer over the internet
(myway.com, yahoo.com)

I am talking about needing at least 100MB (lots of attachments and
business documents/pictures)


ANY other practical solution appreciated!

Many email services can automatically forward all your emails
elsewhere - would that not be an easier solution?
http://www22.verizon.com/forhomedsl/channels/dsl/pop-up+e-mail.htm

Maybe this should be posted as an answer, but the solution seems on
the surface so simple. You need an email program such as Eudora or
Outlook, which simply grabs your email and puts it on your computer.
You can adjust various parameters, and you can even have it check your
email automatically on a schedule you set up. This last feature would,
if you leave your computer on when away, allow the computer to check
your mail and keep your mailbox at the server empty. (You'll need to
make sure you have the program set to delete messages from the server
when downloaded to your computer, which is perhaps even the default,
since most people do that.)
You can get Eudora (including the free Eudora Light) at:

http://www.eudora.com/

and Outlook (including the free Outlook Express) at:

http://www.microsoft.com/catalog/display.asp?subid=22&site=10878&x=64&y=14

I hope this helps. If you feel satisfied, I'd be glad to copy this in
as an official answer to close it out.
Feel free to post requests for clarification, in case someone has more
detail for you.

I just realised you have one further request: that the emails are then
available for you to read from a remote site. The forwarding idea
sounds ideal, especially since you'll obviously need a computer to do
the reading, so there is someplace to get it forwarded to!

I am already using Eudora and am aware of its capabilites regarding
reading and deleting old email...

BUT how do I get to read the emails read and stored by Eudora
(automatically) on my home PC eanywhere in the world (pop or webb
access)

Does your home computer DSL account have a static IP number?

yes my dsl provider gavbe me a static IP address but I use a router after that
and have a few computers on the home network

The outline of your solution is as follows - specifics will be system
dependent:

You need a piece of software for your home computer to implement email
server functions.  It may go by the name of a "proxy email server" or
similar.  There may well be free ones around.
Configure this *between* your real email servers (somewhere on the
net), and your email client (Eudora in this case).  Have the proxy
server regularly check and download mail from your accounts, and store
it locally.

Then, either, directly access this server from wherever you are using
your static IP address and retrieve your mail - or - have Eudora
retrieve your email form your own proxy server (probably the same
computer as Eudora is running on) and forward it to your travelling
account.

With more info on your computer and operating system, more specifics
may be available, but if it's not a Mac, they may have to come from
someone else.

Hope this helps at least a bit.

FYI, I have PostArmor, a proxy mail server for Mac doing something
similar.  It checks my mail on the external server, and only downloads
it if it isn't spam.  My email client, Mail, just thinks PostArmor is
another mail server where it has an account.

An E-mail server is exactly what you need.  You can run it on any PC
in your home network, provided you are willing to keep it powered on
to do the e-mail gathering.

I have setup a couple different server packages for the EXACT same
reason, and with the EXACT same desired results.

Several mail server packages also come with a webmail option, so that
you may login to your mail server machine and read, delete, forward,
store ect..  your mail on any PC that has internet connectivity,
anywhere in the world.  You can also setup your local mail reader
(eudora or outlook or whatever) to grab your mail from your own local
server.

If you are using a robust stable version of Windows 2000 or XP there
are a couple simple email servers that I have used.

Kerio Mailserver is secure and easy to setup.  Although for the
webmail option, you need to IIS installed which I balk at doing due to
security reasons.  But its a great package.

My favorite small server package is called WorkgroupMail.  It is very
easy to setup, provides Webmail access without using IIS, is
attractive and full featured. You will need the pro version for
webmail service.  I highly reccomend this server!  At just over a
hundred bux for a 5 user liscense, it affordavble considering what you
may be losing in missed businees due to bounced emails.

To run the server efficiently you need a static IP addy, a router (nat
router or typical home router will do fine, as long as it can forward
inbound port requests of port 25 (SMTP) and port 23 (POP3) to the
actual LAN IP address of the server machine.  The server machine must
have a static IP on the LAN as well, but for a small home LAN I
reccomend all machines on the LAN have a static IP anyway.

Other than that, you basicaly tell ther server where to pickup your
mail from, and how often. Give it your pop3 and smtp account info and
password, setup an account for yourself in the mailserver, and thats
about it! It will store your mail on your local drive until picked up
or deleted either by your local mail client or via the built in WWW
mail reader server.  Changing your local mail client to retrieve mail
from your new server is easy in the account properties section of your
mail reader.

Like I said, Ive done this a few times, and it works very very well. 
Your ISP mailbox will never overflow if you set your server to gather
mail every 30 mins or so,  you can manage your mail from any machine
on the internet, and local client speed is also a plus.  Also, you'll
have content filtering, spam filtering, and quarentine and antivirus
options.  PLUS with a 5 user liscnse you can provide email services
for your whole family!!

Check those packages out,  its cool stuff.