I am no tech guru or anything… but I know what I like. I had been using IMAP (internet messaging access protocol) as my mail protocol. My desktop interface was Mac Mail and I was using .Mac’s mail service (Apple). I got tired of paying for .Mac and so I canceled my account and the only thing I missed was using the IMAP protocol instead of POP.
Recently Google integrated IMAP into Gmail … well, I am not sure how long Gmail has had IMAP capability but it didn‚Äôt when I switched to it about 6 months ago. Boy am I glad. With IMAP everything is in sync as it should be. When I was using POP it was like things wouldn‚Äôt be deleted or moved to the correct folder. The ‘picture’ of my desktop application was never the same as the web browser.¬† No matter how many of the settings you change or configure, POP never works as nicely as IMAP in my opinion. I was constantly updating the folders and locations of the messages.
Now with IMAP in place, everything I do on my desktop is done online as well. Much nicer. I will say that Apple Mail through .Mac was better than Gmail… but the way Gmail now has IMAP, it functions pretty well, and it’s FREE… that is impressive. Way to go Google.
If you have no clue about what I am talking about and you just don’t know what to do about IMAP vs. POP then hopefully this article made you either want to know, made you want to change to IMAP, or made you continue not caring. If you set it up there are some decent instructions from Google, afterward I would recommend this article on Chinhdo.com as it gives some good tips on using your new setup.