You may get laid that your einsteinium - mail client apply either the Post Office Protocol ( POP ) or Internet Message Access Protocol ( IMAP ) standard to retrieve your messages . But do you love why you should wish ?
When you retrieve a message using IMAP , your e - chain armor client makes a local transcript , but a written matter also remains on the server ( until you cancel it ) . easily yet , IMAP saves a lot of information about your substance — for example , whether you ’ve learn , file , or forward it . The result is your inbox looks the same whether you ’re look at it on your iPhone or your Mac . By contrast , when you apply POP to call up a message , your local copy becomes your only transcript . The subject matter is typically blue-pencil from the server . Even if you tell your e - mail node to impart a message on the server after downloading it , the waiter wo n’t know whether you ’ve read or replied to it .
POP uses bandwidth more efficiently , which is good for people with very slow Internet connections , and it does n’t impose inbox storage quotas . But IMAP offers a master of ceremonies of other advantages . Here are four enceinte cause I think you should alternate today . ( After you ’re positive , teach how to make the switch by reading The IMAP vantage . )
1. Avoid webmail outages
Not long ago , Gmail suffered an outage that affected only user who accessed their e - post via the World Wide Web . Users who connected to theirGmail accountsusing IMAP were unaffected , and could go along to retrieve their mail as usual . To be sure , such problems are extremely infrequent , but even so , the moral is that having more than one way to access any given tocopherol - postal service account can be exceedingly useful . The vast majority of e - mail providers that bid IMAP access also let you get at your post on the internet , and many ( though not all ) Webmail providers also let you use IMAP .
2. Switch clients or platforms painlessly
theorise you decide one Clarence Shepard Day Jr. to flip from Microsoft ’s Entourage 2008 to Apple ’s Mail , or from Qualcomm’sEudorato Mozilla ’s Thunderbird . If you practice daddy , tack clients can be a huge irritation . You may have to export messages from your old client , import them into the new client , or both . Either way , in the process , you lay on the line losing subject matter or the metadata attached to them , because of fundamental differences in the computer storage system various clients use . It ’s such a tussle that if you have hundred of thousands of messages , it may discourage you from moving to another program that could serve you well .
With IMAP , though , this form of problem go away as if by magic . Switching atomic number 99 - post guest is as unproblematic as entering your credentials and a couple of options in a new program . Then you waitress while some or all of your messages download from the server . Messages need never be export or imported at all , and your new client will show the same mailbox , flag , and content organization as the older one . you could even switch ( as I do ) among several different node at any time — for representative , if you generally prefer Mail but occasionally want to employ features that only Entourage has , or if you want to seek out raw Es - mail software program without commit yourself .
3. Read all your mail on multiple devices
If you want to get at your atomic number 99 - mail using a Windows or Linux computer , an iPhone , an iPod touch , or some other portable gadget , simply unfold an IMAP client on the other system , enter your preferences , and you ’re off . For masses who must use a variety of devices or operating systems , IMAP is a tremendous convenience in that it lets you see exactly the same information — include saved , filed , and sent substance — on every equipment . Macworld’sRob Griffiths explores this aspect of IMAP in his video “ Manage e - mail on multiple Macs . ”
4. Keep an extra copy of your messages
Although I always recommend back up all the data on your Mac ( include , of course , your e - mail ) , the fact that IMAP gives you both local and server - ground copies of each message can help you avoid data deprivation . For instance , if your platter crashes or your computer is stolen or damage , you could drop off all your topically stored messages , but with IMAP , the server would still safely hold master copies of all of them . Conversely , if your atomic number 99 - mail provider were to get data point loss on their mail server , your local transcript of each content would serve as a backup .
Senior Contributor Joe Kissell is the fourth-year editor of TidBits and generator ofnumerous ebooks about OS X.
