Multiple PC's for one user?

[Scott Fitzgerald <sfitz007@bestweb.net>]

Instead of buying a commercian "muscle box" I think it would be more  
fun to instead link two pc's to serve one user, namely, myself.   
Thinking about this, I wanted to contact the group.  
  
Has anybody else done this?  I would like to know so I could just  
follow in the footsteps of somebody who has experience.  
  
I would really like to have the repetitive and daemon like jobs run  
on the computer without the keyboard/screen/mouse.  I wonder though  
because in debian exim and cron are in the "base system."  Can a  
Debian system be run without these?  Email in particular, is there a  
setting where I can tell the "lighter" system to use the SMTP server  
of the "heavier" system as a default, or do I need to run a lighter  
SMTP daemon or do I need to program exim for this somehow?  
  
Can simpler and less secure things like telnet be configured to work  
only within the LAN?  I know how to invoke SSH but is seems overkill  
for logging into a box next to the "lighter" box.  any thoughts?  
  
Thanks,  
---  
Scotty