Re: What is the point of IMAP?
- From: David Brown <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:33:27 +0100
Doug Laidlaw wrote:
From what I have seen of handshaking messages, my ISP supports IMAP. From
what I have read about IMAP, it offers nothing that as a single user, I
cannot have with POP3.
Leaving messages on the server: that is a setting in a POP client. Viewing
messages on the Web doesn't delete them, anyway, so later retrieval via POP
is not an issue.
Multiple users accessing emails: who wants it? Emails are supposed to be as
confidential as ordinary mail. I could read my wife's emails, but I don't. Perhaps corporate management can spam their employees more easily. That is
about the only advantage I can think of. In the real world, what
proportion of non-spam is intended for broad distribution (except mailing
lists, of course)?
With POP3, you have the choice of leaving the mail on the server, or deleting it when you collect it. If it is only a tiny mail box, you could leave it on the server without much problem. But for larger mail boxes, you're going to get a lot of problems. You can't practically delete specific mails from a POP3 client (you'd need to use the ISP's web client, which uses IMAP to talk to the mail server). So your POP3 box builds up at the mail server.
Once your client system crashes, or you want to change PC/OS/mail program, or you want to use a second computer, your POP3 client has to download *everything* from the mail server. You get the joys of watching your PC download unwanted spam for hours, only to get a hiccup in the communication and start from scratch again.
Once you have everything downloaded again, if you are using two PC's (say, a desktop and a laptop while travelling) for mail access, each will download every mail, and each will present it as a new email. If you organise emails nicely in folders and with tags in on the one PC, you need to manually duplicate it on the other PC. If you send emails out from one PC and want to see the sent message on the other, you need to add yourself to the mails cc list, and download a new copy on each PC.
With IMAP, a new client setup will only download the headers - mail bodies are downloaded only when you actually choose to read an email, and attachments only when you choose to open or save them (of course, clients will also support offline mode in which they download everything in a folder - that's your choice). All changes (folders, "read" status, tags, junk status) and sent emails are stored on the IMAP server, and are immediately visible to all connected clients.
As you can see, IMAP is much more powerful than POP3, and is far and away the best choice if you want to access the same email from more than one PC (or more than one account on the same PC, or even more than one email program on the same account). Given that most people change computers every few years or so, but try to keep a consistent email account, I think IMAP is the right choice in almost every situation.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: What is the point of IMAP?
- From: Robert Nichols
- Re: What is the point of IMAP?
- References:
- What is the point of IMAP?
- From: Doug Laidlaw
- What is the point of IMAP?
- Prev by Date: Re: What is the point of IMAP?
- Next by Date: Re: What is the point of IMAP?
- Previous by thread: Re: What is the point of IMAP?
- Next by thread: Re: What is the point of IMAP?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
