IMAP on Gmail

If you haven’t heard yet, Gmail is starting to roll out IMAP support. IMAP is awesome. It’s what I use with my email accounts on my server. Most people these days probably use POP mail. With POP mail you log into the server and download the mail. Then you have it on your computer, but it is no longer on the server. With IMAP you log on and view your mail on the server. It stays on the server so you can access that mail from multiple computers. You delete an email and it’s deleted on all the computers. It’s pretty slick. The one thing you have to worry about is sever space though. I like to keep my email boxes on my clients pretty clean. I only keep email I know I am going to need. For this reason I don’t think I am going to use Gmail’s IMAP access.

Yes, I use Gmail also. I don’t think I have ever given out my Gmail address though. I forward a copy of all my mail to my Gmail account. This gives me access to my mail anywhere, and it keeps a nice archive of all my emails. If I deleted something I need, I know it is only a Gmail search away. I use the handy “Send mail as” feature to send my mail as my regular email address. I don’t think anybody can tell if I am sending my mail from Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or Gmail.

I was all excited about IMAP support in gmail, but after further consideration, I think I am going to stick to my current system. I like my email archived in Gmail, but I also like nice clean empty inboxes. IMAP is great. I am sure lots of people will use it, I know I would if I didn’t have it already on my server.