[X4U] Can Apple's Mail pick up GMail?

Ed Gould edgould1948 at comcast.net
Tue Sep 30 20:44:01 PDT 2008


On Sep 30, 2008, at 12:30 PM, Andrew T. Lynch wrote:

>
>> From the referenced website:
>
> "IMAP is a good choice for people who need access to their e-mail  
> from home, the office, the road, and anywhere else. If you were to  
> check your e-mail from three different computers via IMAP, all  
> three of those computers, and the e-mail server, would contain all  
> of your e-mail. If you chose to delete a message from computer A,  
> it would also be removed from computer B, computer C, and the e- 
> mail server."
>
> So, if you access your email from more than one client, IMAP keeps  
> it in synch.  POP does not.  If you access your email from only one  
> client, IMAP has little if any benefit.
>
> The mail is kept on the server, which can fill up, but so can your  
> home machine.  And, with IMAP you always have the choice of moving  
> messages off the server into a folder "On My Mac", much as POP  
> does.  The server also may have a better backup strategy than your  
> home machine.
>
> I access my email using Mail.app from a laptop and two desktops.  I  
> also access it from my work PC using a web browser.  I need IMAP.   
> If I only acessed my email from my home machine, I might use POP.
>
> -Drew
>
Drew :

Good description clear and concise thanks.

One question that I do have  is though are you depending on the  
server site as being able to back up/restore email? I would think  
this is an issue no matter which method you use. With POP its up to  
you to do backup and it has to be consistent (example every morning  
at 3 AM) At some sites I have heard that they do NOT back up the  
server as it is to volatile.

Ed



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