IMAP or POP? That is the question.

Where do I stand? I use both. IMAP settings are used on my netbook and POP settings are used on my desktop. Why have two different email settings? I’ll explain in the next few paragraphs.

IMAP settings are great because it allows you to have the same information everywhere. I can add folders to my email account on one computer, and it will show up on my other computer. The same thing goes for the messages. If I read or deleted a message on one computer, I will see the same results on the other computer. Is there anything that I don’t like about IMAP settings. Actually… Yes. What I dislike about IMAP settings is that I can only view unread messages if I have an active internet connection. It’s not that big of a deal since my email is so much more organized when I switch between my two computers (soon to be three computers).

POP is what I started off with. With POP settings, all messages are actually downloaded to your computer. I liked the convenience of having every email available to me. All I needed was an internet connection for about a minute. In that minutes, all messages are downloaded to my computer and I can view them at a later time even if I haven’t read them. I still continue to use POP settings, but only on my desktop computer. About a year ago, MSN screwed me over. for some unknown reason, there was an error on their server which caused everyone to lose all of their messages. Luckily, all of my messages were synced to my computer.

Both settings have their pros and cons. To me, the greatest difference is hard disk space. IMAP doesn’t download every single thing like POP settings.

Basically what I’m doing is keeping everything lite on my netbook and using my desktop to save and backup everything. Even though my desktop holds all of my emails, I keep all of my contacts on my netbook since I use it for travel and work.