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So now you’ve got to worry about types of e-mail? Unfortunately, yes. But only if you want to receive and possibly sync your e-mail over several devices, i.e. your phone, your laptop, your home computer, your pad. If not, you’re probably not going to need this discussion.
First, you have to consider how you are retrieving your e-mail. There are two ways. First, there is what we call “webmail.” That is, you go directly to the Internet to a website that links you to your e-mail server. For example, go to www.comcast.net to get your Comcast e-mail, or to AOL.com for your AOL e-mail, or to Verizon.net for your Verizon e-mail. In each case, your ISP (“Internet Service Provider”) is Comcast, AOL or Verizon. That’s who you buy your internet connection from each month. When these ISPs set up your Internet account, they also give you a free e-mail account to go with it. With your webmail account, you go to the e-mail address in your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.) then type in your account name and password and, viola!, there’s your e-mail. You can read it, forward it, reply to it, erase it, etc.
Some of us, however, don’t use webmail. Either our computer wasn’t initially set up that way, or we wanted certain additional features or controls that weren’t available on webmail (which is pretty much “plain vanilla”) or we wanted to get mail from more than one account (e.g. Comcast, Google, home and business) all in one place.
In those cases, we are using a program. It doesn’t matter what the program is. Apple computers come with OS X Mail built in. Windows computers come with either Outlook Express or (in later versions) Windows Live Mail built in. There are other programs such as Outlook (full version), Thunderbird and the like which are both free and paid. The bigger the program, the more you pay, the more features you will get. But, for most of us, the free programs work just fine. We’re not that interested in special colors, fonts and backgrounds for our e-mail (besides, that usually slows them down). The main benefit is that the programs retrieve your messages from multiple accounts at the same time, and store them on your computer, not the mail server.
There’s one more important factor. Regardless of how you get your mail from the ISPs server, how is it “handled.” Any e-mail program will use almost any protocol, so it doesn’t care what your ISP is using. Mail is delivered according to a specific “protocol” or language that is used by the mail server. There are several protocols that can be used, but the two main ones are “POP” and “IMAP.” Each is different and affects how you receive your e-mail in its own way. Usually, you don’t have a choice about which protocol your e-mail provider uses, it’s just the way it is, although some ISPs have both so you can use either or both. But you should know a little more about which one you have, because the features affect your ability to sync e-mail between devices and retrieve lost e-mails.
POP (stands for “Post Office Protocol” is quite straightforward. Your mail is stored on a computer known as the “POP server”. When you request it (either with Web Mail or a program, as discussed above), the server sends it to you and, unless you instruct it to do so, it is then erased on the server and stored on your own computer.
On the other hand, IMAP (“Internet Message Access Protocol”) operates in a similar fashion, but it only sends your computer a copy of your e-mail, but retains the original on the server until you purposely erase it on your computer. POP mail servers are faster and take up more disk space, but IMAP servers won’t let you lose your mail as easily if you accidentally erase it from your computer.
So, you say, this is all very interesting, but what does it mean to me? Well, let’s say you have more than one computer or device. Not necessarily on a single network. It can be a home computer and a laptop you travel with. if you have a POP mail server, unless you can tweak the settings, once you retrieve an e-mail on one computer, it will be erased on the server and it will no longer be available for retrieval on any other computer or device, or even the same computer if you accidentally erase it. It’ll be gone. If you retrieve your e-mail, for example, on your laptop while you are out of town on business, it can’t thereafter be retrieved on your home computer when you return.
On the other hand, if you have an IMAP server, it’ll still be on the server, and you can retrieve it again and again until erased. It’s like keeping an automatic backup of your e-mail. With the IMAP client, even sub-folders you create to sort your e-mail will be accessible anywhere and on any device, because you created them on the server and not just on one of your devices (see below for more discussion).
Now, don’t despair: If you are using one of the popular e-mail programs discussed above, you can tell the POP server not to delete the mail on the POP server until either you delete it on all your computers, or after a certain period of time, or up to a certain total number of e-mails or even “never”. But this procedure doesn’t always work so well: Sometimes, if you alternate between webmail and your program, things may not be exactly the same, and you may see duplicates in webmail. And, if you’ve created mail folders and rules in your e-mail program to sort your incoming mail, you also may not see them on other devices.
Finally, there are an increasing number of users who have multiple devices (phones, pads, laptops, netbooks, desktops, etc.) across multiple platforms (Apples and PCs), and they want them “synced” so that they all display the same information. You will always be able to make adjustments to the e-mail account(s) discussed above, but that’ll be all you can do. If you are expecting to create a complete synchronization of all of the information on your e-mail programs (including the address or contact book, the e-mails, the task list, the calendar and the like), you’ll have two choices to make: Either change your e-mail address and program to a “cloud” computing programs such as Google’s “G-Mail” or pay ($99 a year, I think) for a service such as Apple’s MobileMe. These services store a complete copy of your information on the web, such that your computer and every one of your other devices and computers can access that data on the Internet and will see exactly the same thing. If you make any changes, additions or deletions on the program, it’ll show up everywhere. But this involves possibly changing your existing e-mail address and having your information now stored on the Internet, which isn’t much of a privacy issue (theoretically no one can get to it) but nonetheless bothers some people, particularly businesses, which worry about industrial espionage and proprietary data leaks.
What do I recommend? IMAP, if its available.
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