p4 1.5, what can it cope with?

I'm a regualar here in the coding forums, but have a hardware/os query

My friend has just got a P4 1.5GHz pc and was wanting to take some of the strain off his main PC.

I told him to put w2k server on and his mailserver software, also ftp server.

But what else can he put on, and not cripple the machine. He has two 80gig drives, would it also be okay as a fileserver?

the pc won't be doing any major server rolls, just IMAP server, and PDC, bulletproof ftp server.


I have always gone against bundling too many apps on a pc but would it be crazy to even think about making it his router too? By installing WinRoute. He currently has a p2 266 with smoothwall but it's very out dated now and wants to move on. Plus smoothwall team are a bunch of *****, but we'll not go into that.

So what are peoples thoughts then?

The Pc won't be used for normal day to day tasks so this aint a problem.

cheers.

imho you can run all these services at once unless you want to serve several 100´s users per service and minute.

for better performance he should drop windows and switch to any unix (which can do all these jobs besides the PDC faster and more secure)

For home use, the p4 is TOTALLY OVERSIZED, the 266 would do the job just as well. ram is a very important factor here, you didn´t mention how much he has... but 128-256 for the 266 should be enough. at home i am running a p1-133-128 for all these tasks and even some more (no pdc though...)