Question : Access Thunderbird email and addresses from two computers on a home network

I would like to be able view email and addresses on both a wireless laptop (various places in the house) and a wired desktop located in my office.  I have researched this idea considerably and it seems to be possible.  On the Vista Ultimate desktop which I'll call "Primary", I have moved the TBird profile to a "D" partition and this works fine.  On my laptop (XP Pro), I downloaded a full version of TBird and altered the "proflies.ini" file by changing the "IsRelative" to a "0" and "Path" to the folder on the desktop (set up as shared).  I can see the desktop folders from the laptop. If I am executing TBird on the laptop and if the desktop has TBird open, I get an error message from TBird telling me that TBird is already running.  If I close it on the desktop, I can open TBird on the laptop.  It would appear that there should be a way for me to still see, get and send email from either system (regardless of which one is open) since I cannot be in both places at the same time.  

Web research seems to iimply that possible use of Thunderbird Portable would allow me the function I want on a laptop. However, Thunderbird Portable installed on the laptop will not retain the location of the TBird Desktop network shared folders  in either the Local Folder settings or the Account/Server Settings dialog box.  I can change these boxes to the correct shared  location but as soon as I close the application to restart it, the settings return to their nornal C:\ etc etc.  locations.  

I've been struggling with this quite a bit and cannot seem to find a solution.  I would really appreciate help from someone who is very familiar with TBird.  Thanks.  

Answer : Access Thunderbird email and addresses from two computers on a home network

As Roachy suggested, a local IMAP server might be the best way to go.

This local server will then download all mail from the ISP and then serve it to all clients, which can then be Thunderbird or any other mail program (provided it support IMAP of course).