Re: what is the benefit of imap?
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 10:23:30AM +0100, Stephan Seitz wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 09:06:14AM +0000, Chris G wrote:
>> Are they on your LAN? Using IMAP across the internet (even with a
>> good ADSL connection) can never really be as quick as a local mbox
>> spool, especially if you're dealing with attachments and such. Think
>> about it - a 1Mbyte attachment is going to take some seconds to pull
>> across even a 2 or 3Mb/s ADSL link whereas it's going to be near
>> instantanous from a local file.
>
> Sorry, but I think, here you are wrong. Good IMAP-Clients don’t download
> the attachments without your interaction (at least you can configure them
> in such a way). So the reading of the mails should be fast in both ways.
> But if you wish to open an attachment, IMAP is better than using SSH and
> local spool. With IMAP you only download the attachment, and then the local
> application will deal with it. With SSH and local spool you must start the
> application remote.
>
Er, but I need to download the attachments, otherwise what is the
point of having them! :-)
OK, I can see a list of messages (relatively) quickly using IMAP but
that can hardly be claimed to be reading my E-Mail as fast as when I'm
using a local spool.
What do you mean "using SSH and local spool"? What I mean by "using a
local spool" is exactly that, running the MUA on the system where the
mail spool is, i.e. my desktop machine. I'm pretty sure that's what
the original person making the comment meant too.
--
Chris Green