Requiem

[Simon Bowring]

>I surely do wish some kind soul would explain to me the
>advantages of IMAP.  I can't imagine it being good enough 
>to switch to a  <shudder> command line interface.

IMAP has 3 main advantages over POP abnd SMTP.

1. Mail boxes (folders) exist on the server, so that no matter what
   machine you view your email on (your Palm Pilot, PC or your
   Mum's PC, you see all your familiar folders and messages).

   This is probably the biggest perceived advantage of IMAP!

2. IMAP allows only parts of messages (based on the MIME encoding)
   to be downloaded, so you can read the "guts" of an email, without
   having to wait 30-40 minutes for the attached 2Mb MS Outlook 
   presentation to be downloaded over a 9600 baud radio link into 
   your 128KB PDA(!) where you wouldn't be able to view it anyway!

3. Much of the "email engine" (e.g. the "folders" and MIME parsing/
   support) is in the IMAP server, thus simplifying the work required 
   to produce an email client (as long as they don't have to support 
   POP and SMTP (which of course they currently still do)!
 
See http://www.imap.org/ for more info!

Simon