Some more info...

Email augments my life but does not control it. That's where the distinction is. Much as writing letters is a tool, so is email. If it went away, the world would not end for me and I intend to keep it that way.

Availability? If mail doesn't get delivered immediately, thanks to the joys of SMTP, it will come later (when my ADSL line is back up). If it's urgent, someone can put mouth to phone rather than finger to keyboard.

Updating packages? Cron does this for me once a week. Maintenance? There is none. Everything is done properly once and automated.

I access everything via SSH if I have to which is rarely. I avoid email on the move where possible as there are more important things to do like looking in front of you and not worrying about stuff.

I make sure I don't need past emails. Not everything everyone has written is golden. In fact most of it is useless and just noise.

For reference's sake, I trialled Google Apps on a domain for 2 months as a possible replacement for my setup. It was a pain in the butt. There is actually no support worth anything if it does go wrong which it did terribly (gmail stopped working entirely with a server error). The entire domain approval process is problematic and time consuming and their contracts are disagreeable. Plus it didn't deliver any additional value.

Ultimately, if you look at it, there is actually more work to setting up a system to backup contacts and calendars and watching that than there is to operate my setup entirely.

I assume you are backing up your google apps accounts?

Unfortunately, your lifestyle can't work for all of us.

I currently freelancing my way through school. Not as a developer, but as a stagehand. The way I get work is through email. At any given moment, one of any number of production managers, lighting supervisors, technical directors, or production supervisors might be sending me an email. This email will say when and what types of laborers they are looking for. They may need labor tomorrow or 4 months from now. Usually, these positions are booked on a first come first serve basis.

I need my email. If my email went away or didn't go to my phone reliably and on time for an hour, I could miss an opportunity for hundreds of dollars. If it didn't go to my phone for a week, I wouldn't make rent that month.

Yea, it sucks that my life is driven by email, but this is so much better than the way things used to be for stagehands.

"Email augments my life but does not control it." I can't really say that the way self respecting hackers are, but self respecting people are.

I'm not a hacker, i don't plan to be one. I run my own server with a similar config as you do [i do run spamassasin]. I don't let telephone, mail, im, or letters run my life; as i don't let google, yahoo, facebook or whatever do the same. I'm not a hacker, but i share and respect the values Harald Welte wrote about, as a person.

Can you _send_ emails from your ADSL line? Mine are rejected since I have a semi-dynamic IP address.

Most ISPs will let you smarthost out via their upstream mail server.

Oh, right, I tried that too, they said they've discontinued that service years ago.

If you ISP provides SMTP for their e-mail (almost all do), then barring outbound From address filters, you can set up your SMTP server to treat the customer facing mail server as a smarthost.

The ISP doesn't need to do anything specific to support it.

I was absolutely sure they did filter, but I've just tested and apparently they don't. Well, that's unexpected. I might switch to self-hosting again then.

This is what I do. My ISP has a relay which I send all non local email from postfix to. I have a static IP address.