The first and last time a computer of mine boots Windows it will be to download a shiny new linux iso. I have no idea why people put up with Microsoft's tactics. Windows 7 was not a horrible OS, but their strongarm installation tactics for 10 would seem to turn almost any user off. Guess people will keep swallowing while MS keeps shoveling.

Put up with being fed garbage, and you will continue to be fed garbage.

A million e-mail accounts. That's a lot. You're facing the potential of hundreds of thousands of users hitting a POP3 server once a minute, without taking into account the webmail and any IMAP use (with its associated socket inefficiencies). This means you need a lot of equipment and hacking skills.

So, to handle the load you need a lot of servers. For a million accounts, you might be looking at twenty medium specced Linux boxes. So log into the company's GoDaddy account or whatever and set up twenty MX records for each of the different machines. Now you're ready to do the real work.

Set up a basic POP3 and MTA on each machine. Doesn't really matter which. Sendmail is fine, but make sure to order a book so you can correct any config mistakes over the coming weeks. You also want to install SpamAssassin. Avoid the latest version for certain reasons. SpamAssassin 3 will do. Get this all running on each machine. Assign usernames and passwords to all users and create all the accounts on every single machine (more on this later). Tell all users that any who have problems can get in touch with you, otherwise they might get upset. Try to send this e-mail before the MX records propogate otherwise they won't get it for a while.

As the multiple MX records mean mail will be going to a random server, it is essential every user be on every machine. So how will people get all their mail rather than a twentieth of it? Easy, you set up a round robin DNS on mail.DOMAIN.com. This way whenever a user checks their mail, they'll randomly end up on a different mail server, therefore collecting more of their mail.

IMAP gets trickier in this situation, but I came up with a solution. Since no-one uses IMAP, you can dedicate one box to it. Set up all the accounts there and write a Perl script which logs into all the other boxes on POP3 for every account, then puts the messages into the folders on the IMAP server. Get this script to run (with crontab) every minute.

Webmail will need a similar script, but I leave that as an exercise for you as I've given you enough strategy already.

Good luck!

Then an xbox it will be. It is much easier to justify an xbox than a whole new system dedicated to Doom. Easier to justify to the wife that is.