Re: Why a PC?
"The drawbacks are its hardware is not really designed for 24x7 operations, and I would not store my emails on a SD card (especially a consumer grade one), since a mail... "
My emails aren't stored on the Pi2, they are removed every 15mins via my pop clients. And of course its hardware is perfectly able to handle 24x7 operation. It may have escaped your notice that many hundreds of milions of tablets, phones and SSDs exist today, all using flash.
And of course, I am a consumer...