Not leaving the PC on all the time essentially limits the use of Unite. Contacts and calendar events can be updated from any configured blackberry without re-connecting to the server. I find it strange that your boss would want to use the product for business, but not run it on business hardware, but bosses get to make those decisions.
For what it's worth, I run our shop's Unite server in a VMWare partition on an existing machine. It you have, or can get an XP Pro (or even Home) license you can get away with as little as 512MB assigned to the VM though I tend to run it with 1GB. To be of any practical use though the Unite server needs to be running 24/7 and has to be able to connect to the RIM server farm appropriate to your location. This is an outbound TCP/IP connection that does not need significant changes to most firewalls, and can be via a proxy server if necessary. It does, by default, give configured blackberries access (via an AES encrypted tunnel) to any part of the internal network that the Unite server can access. So some careful thought should be put into where on a network the server is connected and the implications of this remote access.
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