I've been POP for years with Entourage.
Most people seem to be favoring Imap.

Is there any reason to stay with POP given all the mobile advantages of imap? thanks.

I avoided IMAP for a long time because my ISP at the time allocated only a very small amount of disk space for email storage and it was constantly on the verge of overflowing. At the same time I was not trying to keep the mail on two or more computers and smart phones synchronized. So downloading everything to my Mac, which had relatively generous amounts of available disk space made a lot of sense.

These days my email providers offer pretty generous storage for IMAP and I am synching between an iMac, a Macbook Air, an iPhone, and just recently an iPad; POP makes no sense for me to use at all. In fact I have my ISP email account, which is POP only, routed through a GMail account configured for IMAP.

thanks Joe.
Interesting. I tested imap a year or two ago and got scared off. "seemed" I was losing emails or some stability issues could not pinpoint.

But everyone, very high end folks like you report no issues, so I'm going to try again.

I'm a homebody so I'm not as mobile as most, but it would be nice to travel even for a weekend or even a day at a coffeehouse and be able to bring the laptop and check emails and know they are also on the desktop synchronized.

I guess ones just has to adjust to the new look/ feel of it like everything else.

Currently, when I travel for 5 days, I copy over the whole identity to my laptop of Entourage. Hopefully I wont have to do that anymore.

That is exactly what IMAP is all about


I'm not sure what you mean by a different look and feel. I use Apple Mail and the only difference I see is the mailboxes are not under On My Mac, but under the specific Account. Where I have run into differences is how to get mail to appear in different sub mailboxes. For example with MobileMe you just create the Mailbox and a rule to handle the routing. GMail IMAP is something of a world of its own. You have to create the Sub Mailboxes and setup the routing to them on-line in Google Mail but then they will show up in Apple Mail. If you have any questions about this check back here.


Yep that will be a thing of the past.

NOTE: Not all email hosts support IMAP. Neither of the ISPs I have used here, AT&T and Comcast, do which is why I route their traffic through a GMail account.

That's a good point. All my business website accounts have no issues with imap, but Verizon, which handles, for example, the forum emails I get notification here and other stuff do not support it.

I don't use Gmail usually, but perhaps could for those?

I'm on Entourage and moving to Outlook 2011 in a few months.

How do you deal with isp/ via Gmail who don't support imap?

GMail can be setup to automatically fetch mail from other email accounts into a single GMail account which you can setup and access as IMAP. You can even set GMail up so that when you reply to an eMail from say your Verizon account it will send the reply form your Verizon account.

I heard about that Joe, thanks. Do I have to be in Gmail or I can be in Entourage or later, Outlook 2011? If I don't have to be on the actual web in Gmail, do I have to be logged into Google 24/7?

There are detailed instructions on the Google site for configuring almost any eMail client to access GMail as either POP or IMAP. The basic GMail IMAP settings are..

Incoming Server: imap.gmail.com
Port: 993
Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
Autentication: Password
Outgoing (SMTP) server: smtp.gmail.com
Outgoing port: 495
Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
Authentication: Password

Sounds like a lot of work Joe, but I'll dive in at some point. Again, not sure you know, but:

Do I actually have to be on the web -- in Gmail or I can be in Entourage or later, Outlook 2011? in not, do I have to be logged into Google 24/7?

That all depends on exactly what you mean and how you have Entourage, Outlook, Mail, Eudora, Thunderbird or whatever you are using on your computer configured.

• In order to send or receive email, whether it is POP or IMAP your email client, Entourage, Outlook, Mail, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc. must have internet access.
• After setting up your account, you never have to be logged on to Google or Google Mail in order to send or receive. Entourage, Outlook, Mail, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc. can and do directly access the Google IMAP and SMTP servers.
• If you mean can you read your email without a network connection then the answer is a qualified, maybe. Most eMail clients such as Entourage, Outlook, Mail, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc. can be configured to download
  1. Only the header and subject line of the messages in the mailbox
  2. The header, subject line, and the first few lines of text.
  3. The entire contents of messages in the mailbox
  4. The entire text of all message and save them on your hard drive for offline browsing.
• With a reasonably fast broadband connection you will see ver little, if any, noticeable difference in response time with any of the four options unless there is a BIG attachment. Personally I have my GMail account set to store everything on the IMAP server.

A final caveat, GMail provides 7GB of storage for eMail so their IMAP is not a bottomless pit for TeraBytes of messages and attachments, but what do you expect for FREE?

thanks Joe, will explore. So you don't use a client like me (Entourage, Outlook)-- you are a Gmail guy and use Imap there?

about the only disadvantage to using imap I can think of is the space issue. Just like with pop, if your inbox gets to capacity the mailserver will stop accepting messages. This can happen with pop if your mail reader is told NOT to delete messages after a period of time in your inbox, and it fills up even though you have deleted them from your list.

If you have a limited imap space, you simply need to create computer-local folders in the list, and drag mail you want to keep long-term into those folders, remembering that they will not be available on other computers or the web interface. Only new messages and mail you want to have available everywhere needs to stay in the imap account.

I AM a client guy, I use Apple's Mail application to access both my GMail account and my MobileMe account. I did configure my Gmail account while logged into Google Mail to access my Charter account as well as another GMail account and feed them to Apple Mail as IMAP.

thanks Guys, I will delete most stuff in inbox, Virtual. I do save lots of emails, but I think those are just on my hardrive at that point.

thanks Joe, I plan to pluge in and do the whole G mail thing to via Entourage and later outlook 2011, will report back if need be!
BTW I was kind of scared on outlook 2011 but it imports most stuff from Entourage well. I tried Mail and Mail just would not import well at all. It also would not import accounts at all. I'm sure it's fine once you get going though.