Pegasus Mail & Mercury

My questions are probably going to be some of the most basic there are. I have read at least 15 post on this site that I thought might give me some bearings and at least 20 more to see, if I could deduce the problem from some of the ore advanced issues others have had. I am quite impressed that almost every matter on this discussion board gets answers that make sens the the person who asks the question, however, I am way behind the curve.

Goals:

1. Complete Basic Mercury setup and learn how mail servers work.
   
2. My goal is to get Mercury setup to send one (1) email as a test of XAMPP package.
   
3. Use mercury as email server for a local test server run from laptop.

Problems:
I have no idea how to tell if it is even setup properly. One of the other posts indicated that when mercury setup comes with XAMPP it is usually already setup up to do some things. (I guess there has to be a default) The interface is anything but user-friendly to an absolute newb, but I understand some of the terminology and concept, but I have now practical experience with configurations. This make it difficult to ask a question and the system help - is not written for newbs. (Do a search in help for "setup" or "configure"...) In the contents I find this under the (The Mercury Core Module Configuration)

The Mercury Core Module Configuration
To configure the basic operation of the Mercury core processing engine, choose Mercury core module from the Configuration menu.

That's it ... there is no information about how actually configure it or any information about how to trouble shoot it. So, there I am. Got no clue. 
 

This is my system info and some config settings:

• Laptop PC
  
• OS: Windows XP
• ISP: Cable uses DHCP  (I believe that means dynamic host control protocol?) to assign network addresses
• Web Server: Apache (installed locally)
  
• Mail server: Mercury/32 v4.52
• Internet Name for System: localhost
• Local Mailbox Directory Path: C:\XAMPP\MERCURY\MAIL\~N (my local host files are in the XAMPP folder) 

This is about all I can provide. Can someone lead me to the the right FIRST questions anything this difficult has to be worth learning.
 

Dont' know if the help file has been munged in XAMPP, but mine has a LOT more info than that (you have clicked on the links in the page you referenced for 'Mercury Core Module' etc. haven't you )

I would suggest you start at the contents page and browse through the help file. There is a lot of very good info, explanations and examples.

If it doesn't turn a light on, at least you will have some more specific questions to ask .

(i.e. RTFM )

It would also be helpful to know what you want your mail server to do.

Send AND RECEIVE via SMTP?

Get mail from a POP3 box?

How many users, onsite/offsite?

IMAP?

Mail lists?

.....?