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[James Bucanek]

Jamie Kahn Genet wrote on Sunday, April 17, 2005:

>James Bucanek <subscriber at gloaming.com> wrote:
>> Went to IMAP years ago.  Ran away screaming and cursing.  Will probably
>> never go back.
>
>Why exactly, if you don't mind me asking?

For my needs, it simply adds a useless layer of complexity to getting my mail.  Mainly, it's just dreadfully slow.  Even with a cable modem Internet connection, just opening my mail app was painful because it would have to re-sync with 100+ mailboxes.  Reading a hundred local files is orders of magnitude faster.

It was also a dog getting mail.  To apply any kind of complex filtering, every message still had to be downloaded to my local client, which would then have to send command back to the server to move the message around.  A POP client just gets the messages and does something with it (locally).  Much faster.  So IMAP actually created more Internet traffic than POP.

If I want to run a script (like my mail archiving script) or re-process mail, often it had to be read (again) from the server, then more interminably slow IMAP commands have to sent back to the server to update the mailbox.  It's not like it didn't work, but the exact same procedure on local mailbox files are about a thousand times faster.  And, I don't have to be connected to the Internet to use them.

I admit where IMAP can be really useful for someone who accesses their mail from multiple locations (like a home and work computer).  And if I were in that situation, I might consider setting up an IMAP account to do that.  But outside of that advantage, IMAP simply takes everything that a good POP client can do and gets in the way.

-- 
James Bucanek <mailto:privatereply at gloaming.com>