Pop3

[Jonathan Hutchins]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Densmore" <DensmoreB at ctbsonline.com>

> Why pop3? Or why IMAP?
> Which one to use and why?

Well, pop3 is an older protocol, meant for clients to pull messages from
servers to a local spool.  Default behavior for most systems is to delete
the message after transferring.

IMAP, on the other hand, maintains the spool and any subfolders on the
server, and "maps" the tree to the local client.  While any message to be
read must be transferred in it's entirety, just the headers are transferred
when viewing a list of messages.  IMAP allows more reliable access from
multiple locations; depending on POP to download only new messages is the
reason some of us have no hair.

While pop3 is a very mature protocol, and most clients and servers do it
well with very few errors, IMAP is newer and pretty clunky, some
combinations of client and server won't work well if at all, and it always
seems slower than it should be to me.