Re: what is imap?

[Berend De Schouwer <bds jhb ucs co za>]

On 27 Jun 2001 19:06:09 -0400, Justin Ward wrote:
> help a newbie.. what exactly is imap, anyway? i've been hearing an awful
> lot about it.. i just use pop, i guess, but i'm kind of curious..

IMAP allows you to organize your mail on the mailserver.  You keep your
mail on the mailserver, you have multiple mailboxes on the server, etc.
The mail is copied to your machine on a message-by-message basis as you
read them, and then discarded.

The advantages in a corporate environment include that you only need to
backup one single machine, and users don't complain that they lost their
precious mail when their harddrive goes (and it will go).

The advantages to users is that they read the same mail, with the same
mailboxes, when they are at home, as when they are at work, or anywhere
else.

The disadvantages include that you have a problem reading mail off-line,
and that the server needs more diskspace.  These alone mean you won't
find IMAP in a normal ISP environment.

There other other means to solve this problem.  In a Unix shop you might
run NFS on your mail-spool, for example.

> justin
> _______________________________________________
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> balsa-list@gnome.org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/balsa-list

Kind regards,                             
Berend                                  

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Berend De Schouwer, +27-11-712-1435, UCS