Re: what is the benefit of imap?
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 12:34:18PM +0100, Rocco Rutte wrote:
> Depends. Most people using IMAP use it through IMAP providers which
> "guarantee" you 24/7 availability. You mostly have professional admins
> who do the work for you and ensure you have access to mail. With local
> management, that would be your job. For example, your harddisk with the
> mail spool dies and all mail is gone. That is rather unlikely to happen
> with say gmail.
It depends on your situation. If you only ever check mail from one
machine then by all means use pop. Just make sure that one machine has
redundancy and a backup policy. Most servers have some kind of backups
and if you are the administrator you deal with them, but most mail
users don't.
If you use multiple computers imap has many benefits. Checking mail
from a friends house using webmail? You can still dig up the 2 month
old joke and show it to him. You can sift through your sent mail to
show him the scathing email you sent some tool on a mailing list. Most
people that use pop don't have that ability.
If you want the best of both worlds checkout offlineimap. Your mail
can be local and you an get all the speed. Yet its still stored on a
mail server that presumably someone else is taking care of and has
proper backups. Guess what ... if they don't you have an automatic
backup and your mail will get pushed back to the server when you can
connect again.
IMHO IMAP is just more flexible.
--
Nick Anderson <nick.anderson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Network & Systems Administrator
PilgrimPage Inc. | Absorbent Ink
http://www.pilgrimpage.com | http://www.absorbentprinting.com
Office: (785) 842.9164
Desk: (785) 830.6812