[geeks] Q: How to set up "private" Presto email service?

[Dan Sikorski]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
> Well, the idea is to provide one-way (incoming) email access to my folks (they had an iOpener, that got too old to continue using), then we tried a laptop, but it got crapified *immediately* and my folks were, honestly, afraid of breaking something. Now I want to drop a small box in their den, and have it print out emails sent to them.
>
> W/O POTS is not an option, as they don't have an ISP - you could say I'm trying to avoid the $10/month fee (I think $120 for the printer is quite reasonable, but it won't work without the monthly service).
>
> The part I want to "create" is the client (the printer component) with a headless PC & UPS w/ automatic graceful shutdown when the power goes out.
>
> I'm envisioning a headless SFF PC running *nix, and procmail ingesting the incoming email and sending email (and attachments) to a local printer after matching the "From:" header to a known list of senders (kids, others).
>
> It would be great if I could just set up the PC with Outlook, have the PC poll my server once a day (at night, lower phone costs), and configure Outlook to print out each email as it arrives, but that doesn't seem to be an option...
>   
<smartass>
I think I've seen something like this before...  It's been a few years, 
but I think it was called a FAX machine, or something like that?
</smartass>

If the iopener worked, why not a mac mini, or PC running <something 
other than windows> to avoid craptification?

    -Dan