Can email storage folders be shared across 2 PCs on a home network?

Here is my situation. I have a desktop PC running Windows Vista and a laptop PC running windows 7. What I want to do is have a single set of email files that can be accessed either from the desktop or the laptop so I can work my email from either computer. I find that I cannot do this with windows live mail as it forces the email storage folder to be on a local harddrive therefore I cannot set the remote desktop drive and the storage email folder on the laptop. Can I achieve what I want if I use eM Client 2.6 for my email purposes? Is the free licensing going to be problematic to do this?

This question was originally posted over 6 months ago. five people since then have indicated they have the same question and still no response? Not good.

I am desperately searching for a better tool for e-mail than Windows Live. It seems that MANY people are. So far I’ve tried and rejected Eudora and Pegasus. I’m able and willing to pay for a good solution.

My query is the same as Denis’s, except that I’m about to put a storage device on my home network and I’m looking for programs to be configured to save and open their files from this device on the network. That way the same files can be used/opened/saved by the same programs on both my Win7 desktop and laptop.

Can eM clent be configured to do this?

EM Client can configure to change the database location. So shared network folder shouldn’t be a problem. However the question start to raise here. One, would eM be able to handle multiple session of eM opening the database at the same time? Two, the license information AFAIK stored within the database. Not locally. This will more likely to cause a problem.

I have no need to setup up like this. Change the database location is easy. Why don’t you just try and report back?

Thank you VERY much for the prompt reply, TNC S.

I’ve done a lot of research in the 12 hours since my first post and come to realize that your first point is a strong one. Others have suggested the same potential problem with other e-mail clients. I can see the very real event of my wife and I opening eM Client on two computers at the same time without thinking and corrupting the database.

Your second point makes sense, too.

So … while I’d have been glad to test this for the eM Client community, I’m afraid I’m going to have to scale back and simply plan for us to check e-mail on only one computer - and look for the best e-mail replacement for Windows Live Mail.

Since I’ve got five accounts, I guess I’ll be seeing if eM Client is good enough to justify the $50 for the pro version.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply,

Mike

No problem. EM Client has a trial period of 14 days which has no restriction on the 2 account limit. Give it a try.

If the message store was built upon a database layer, then there really shouldn’t be a problem with data corruption from 2 competing clients for the same resource. A file system typically supports file-locking granularity, which requires a lock for a write operation, not a read. A database typically supports record-locking granularity, which requires a lock only for a write operation. Of course a dB store might also require some kind of transaction processing monitor, that can commit or roll-back a complete macro-transaction, made up of many interrelated smaller ones. It would be nice if an SQL dB layer was built into the OS, but I guess we’re unlikely to get there anytime soon, even if MS was seriously looking at building it into Windows over 10 years ago…oh well…

Hi, thank you for the suggestion, I’ll pass your message to the developers and we’ll take a look at it.

Thank you,
Paul.