Do You Access Your Email Account from Mulitple Computers?

Do you access your email account from multiple computers? Have you added a smartphone into the mix as well? If so, you should be aware of IMAP. IMAP-enabled email accounts offers better email handling than old-fashioned POP email accounts.

Both POP and IMAP are communication methods used between email programs, like Apple’s Mail or Microsoft’s Entourage, and an email server. POP has been around for many many years. It works just fine but it’s model is out-dated. IMAP was developed around the realization that people increasingly want to check their mail from multiple computers (or cell phones or whatever). Thus, some or all of your email is stored on the server, not on just one computer. Then you can setup say, a home computer, a work computer and a smart phone to all access (view) that email (using IMAP). What you’ll see in your Inbox on each of those computers is the same. You’ll see the same list of messages on each computer plus you’ll see which messages are “new” or have the “replied to” mark next to them. If you delete a message from one computer, it’ll be deleted from the server then subsequently from each of the other computers when those computers next talk to the mail server.  In other words your Inbox stays synchronized across mulitple computers. This same type of synchronization can be setup for other mail folders like Drafts, Sent, Trash as well as saved messages. IMAP is very useful. Personally, I think everybody should be using IMAP, even if you’re only using one computer currently. If you’re interested in using IMAP you could contact your email provider. Not all email providers offer IMAP service. Or, if they do offer it they sometimes charge more since IMAP requires increased storage space on the server and increases the server’s workload.

There is a common myth that if one uses IMAP that email messages ONLY reside on the mail server. This is not true. Each computer will store it’s own local copy of email messages on its hard drive. This way, you can read or review email messages even if you don’t have Internet access such as while on a train or plane.

This recent article in TidBITS gives some more detail about IMAP and its features. You don’t have to read the entire article which covers other topics as well; just a few paragraphs about how IMAP works.