[mikester]

Zeke - none of your computers are really in charge of any of the others. What that "basically" means is that you don't have to log into a "server" to get on the network.

In a typical business network you log into a "server" to authenticate to resources on the network and the computer itself. Resources can be anything from printers, internet access to file shares.

All you have is multiple computers sharing the same internet connection. If you're sharing some resources that complicates things only slightly.

No real authentication is needed between the computers if they don't share anything (like printers or files) between themselves.

They are all by themselves and they don't interact with eachother or depend on eachother for anything.

If you're using Windows XP/2000 the "log in" process is simply a local authentication to get access to the computer itself. If you're on Windows 9X it means about the same but is much less sophisticated.

The "IP address" is the internet protocol address; that's is literally your computer's address on the network just like your address on your street. It is used so that other computers know where your computer is so that when you go to a web page or a mail server and ask for something it knows via your IP address how to get it back to you.

As far as the mail thing is concerned - they should all be able to access the same mailbox (maybe not at the same exact time if your ISP does not permit multiple logins though) just fine. The settings in the mail clients just need to be the same accross the board. The instructions given before cover that well enough.

Let me know if I wasn't clear.