[X-Unix] Re: local IMAP server?

[Timothy Luoma]

On Mar 20, 2005, at 5:56 AM, Stroller wrote:

> I can imagine anyone who has tried IMAP to go back to their old way of 
> doing things - try it for a week or two & see the difference, you'll 
> still have your old mailboxes if you decide you prefer that.

I suspect you meant "can't imagine"....

IMAP is simply too powerful once you see it working... if you need it.  
For example, I have friends who use Hotmail/YahooMail/Gmail/etc 
"because I can get to it from any computer"

Yeah, if you don't mind the ads, and the fact that you have to be 
online to read your email, and are willing to trust someone who is 
providing free email to do serious backups, etc.

OTOH, I have ad-free IMAP as part of my webhosting package.  I can use 
Opera, Mail, Entourage, Thunderbird, etc and see which one I like best. 
  New beta version of some other IMAP app?  Go ahead and test it out, 
you can always go back.  I can use my Mac or a PC or (since my webhost 
has Squirrelmail installed) any computer.

The best part is that I can use my handheld (Treo 600 using 
Snappermail) to read messages on it while in the car (as a passenger!) 
or on a plane (fetch mail before takeoff, read, delete, reply while on 
the plane and sync changes back once we land).  Messages deleted at one 
point are deleted everywhere.  If I mark it read one place, it's marked 
read everywhere, etc.

I have thought about setting up my own IMAP server, but my ISP does a 
good job of it.  I set Mail.app to cache everything for offline reading 
anyway, so there's no need for me to store it all locally, plus they 
back it up when they backup the rest of my account.

IMAP is excellent.

TjL