For a companie of about 20 desktop and laptop computers, and there wanting to host there own web site, host there own email, plus date storage ie backups what kind of server would they need in terms of hardware.

Well that all depends on so much, How much mail will they be getting, how many hits will they be getting on the web site, how much data are they going to be saving on the server.

I like to set up servers with two processors. In this case I would get a server with at least 2GB Ram if not more. Running windows 2003 server, Exchange 2003, with Raid 5 storage of at least 200GB and a good tape backup solution.

You might want to have them consider Microsoft Small Business Server. You will want at least 4-8 GB of memory to run the server, Exchange, and a web server on the same hardware.

Disk size will depend on what current usage is factored with a % growth forecast during the life of the server.

A couple of hundred gigabytes of disk space should be sufficient.

Dual processors, Pentium IV or Xeon.

Shop around, a lot of times HP, Dell, and IBM have servers like this already configured. You can customize as necessary.