[X-Unix] CL Usenet and email

[Stroller]

On Apr 16, 2005, at 10:34 pm, James Bucanek wrote:

> 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.

This can be a problem if you're not close to the IMAP server. I've 
found it agonising over 56k, but at all other times my connection is 
limited by my ADSL upload of 256k, which is generally pretty usable.

> 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.

That's why current versions of Mail.app cache the messages from the 
server.

I _think_ this was introduced in Panther - I seem to recall that IMAP 
on Panther is faster than it was on Jaguar, but I can't remember for 
sure. Could it have been under Jaguar you tried IMAP? Certainly IMAP in 
Panther's Mail.app is very usable.

> 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.

I'm pretty sure that IMAP commands like "move this message to that 
folder" shouldn't require the whole message to be sent back to the 
server & back down again, and are really fairly efficient. Yes, not as 
efficient as downloading POP3, but POP3's dependency upon storing all 
your messages locally is a real problem for me.

Other people have requested complex message-filtering, saying that they 
want a mail-client that handles regular-expressions. This is a killer 
feature of IMAP, as mail-filtering can be done on the server and 
messages are sorted into boxes before the client even sees them; I use 
maildrop & just edit a text-file when I add a rule.

The suggestion that a mail-client should do filtering upon IMAP 
messages is just abhorrent to me. I appreciate that you used IMAP only 
from this single client, but for me server-side filtering is essential 
- I can check IMAP from my new PDA, which is only interested in the 
contents of Inbox. Sure, I can move something from Inbox to Read on my 
PDA, but I have no interest in accessing the hundreds of mailing-list 
messages I get each day from it - considering what my provider charges 
for GPRS access, this is undoubtedly a disappointment to 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.

I would think that of the number of people who try IMAP, you're in the 
minority using only one machine to access your mail, especially on a 
technical list such as this.

Stroller.