In the thread that Kees referred to, the poster apparently wanted mail to come in to all computers simultaneously. Perhaps what he wanted cannot be done without exchange server. You asked if you could read your e-mail on the laptop, and the answer is yes, for mail on the server. You cannot, however, read mail that has been downloaded to the other computer and removed from the server. The problem is, if you use the default Outlook settings, when mail is downloaded into your inbox it is automatically deleted from the server. Thus, if you want to save any of the mail, it may have been downloaded and saved to folders on two different systems; the files will be disjointed and not easily combined.
However, if you set Outlook not to delete the files on the server, you can read your mail on one system at one time and on another at a later time. The downside is that you must then maintain the list of files on the server to prevent exceeding your allotted space. This can be done by setting a time limit on retention or by logging directly onto the server and deleting files no longer needed.
Depending on your needs, there are several possible scenarios:
1) You are away from the desktop a day at a time, and you want to read and reply to mail during the day, but want to maintain all mail folders on the desktop: ? Set Outlook on the laptop not to remove mail from the server; you can read and reply to messages from the laptop during the day and then later, when you have returned to the desktop, you can download the mail and store it in folders on the desktop. If you set this Outlook to remove mail after downloading, you will have normal maintenance of server files.
2) You are away for long periods, and the volume of mail is too great to make the above practical: ? Set up an e-mail account to be used solely for transfer of mail. Download the mail normally onto the laptop and, after reading and replying, forward a copy of those you wish to retain (probably no more than half) to the special account; the allotment for this account will not fill up as fast. Later, when you are back at the desktop, you can forward the mail from the special account to the regular account on the desktop and store it in folders.
3) A variation of method 2) is to use one (or more) accounts strictly for storing mail. Any mail from either computer could be forwarded to the appropriate account ? say one for business, one for personal, one for misc., etc. It could then be stored in folders appropriately and at your convenience.
While these methods are not as simple as if you were doing everything on one computeror perhaps using Exchange Server, and it does take some extra effort, they do provide ways that you can use your laptop and desktop together for working with e-mail. You can see how you might adapt the above methods to create other scenarios.
Some things encountered here are undocumented, or at least poorly documented, in Outlook For example, if you store a letter in a folder on one machine, it can not again be downloaded to that machine even though it is still on the server and can be still be downloaded to other machines. This applies also to deleting mail on one machine; this just puts it in the Deleted Items folder and it will not download. (Hmmm, I haven?t tried downloading mail again after the Deleted Items folder has been emptied; I wonder if the flag is reset and it could now be downloaded?)
If you wish to use a technique like this, you will need to do a little experimenting. You can do this with junk mail that you were going to discard anyway.
Hope this helps
Frank