Re: what is the benefit of imap?
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 10:32:23AM +0100, Joost Kremers 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.
>
> true, but when i get attachments, i usually save them immediately to my
> home dir, which is sync'ed with a usb drive that i carry around (almost)
> everywhere i go... certainly the inconvenience of waiting a few secs for an
> attachment to download doesn't weigh up to the convenience of accessing my
> mail boxes from anywhere i like.
>
But that wasn't the issue. I quite agree that if you need to access
your mail while on the move then IMAP is an easy way of doing it. On
the other hand if you *don't* need to access mail from anywhere then
IMAP is slower than other ways of doing it and doesn't add any other
particular advantages. I.e. IMAP is good for some people but not for
other people, it depends on your requirements.
--
Chris Green