Hamster Ys is a free newsserver and mailserver software, which allows to collect news and mails from different servers. Collected messages are then available for any newsreader or mailclient on your local computer or on any computer in your family or company network. The program runs under all Windows versions (95, 98, ME), under Windows NT, 2000 and XP it can additionally be installed as a system service.
Hamster Ys is mostly based on Jürgen Haible's Hamster Playground
with some additional features.
Unlike its predecessor versions "Classic" and "Playground 1.0", this version of Hamster Ys is split in two parts:
First part is HService, which is intended to run in the background and which does the actual work. Second part is HControl, which contains the user interface and talks to HService over a TCP/IP connection.
The advantage is, that HControl does not have to be installed on the same computer, it can be run from any computer, which can access the HService one by TCP/IP:
The obvious disadvantage is, that you have to deal with two different programs, but as said above, the HService one is intended to run in the background. So as soon as HService is installed and running, it does not require further attention.