Re: Why IMAP so Inconsistent, fickle, not user friendly etc. vs Pop
- From: VanguardLH <V@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 12:24:29 -0600
Carl R wrote:
I previously had pop settings, very easy to operate in outlook just your
standard folders piece of cake .Last week I got a smart ph. that needed
IMAP settings to operate. Contacted my ISP server (Clearwire) and changed
setting in outlook to IMap. Things then became very unpredictable & weird,
deletions very unpreditable, fatal error messages, opening folders very
slow. Its like I have a virus in that program & the rest of the comp.programs
are perfect. I went from 6 standard pop folders to 33 Imap Folders (2 of
those I personally created) & 27 on my phone. ISP tells me that because it is
g-mail it really does not wk with outlook and I should look at an other
e-mail program, ( I want to keep my outlook!) or go back to pop which will
just go to my phone but then I could not receieve on outlook, cell provider
seems to think not, I have gone round & round with these 2 the past week &
still can't get a straight answer. ISP also told me that 2007 ( which I am
not opposed to getting) appers to be more stable with g-mail. ISP has removed
re entered & checked new IMAP setting nuerous times Can you help? I am not
the brightest bulb in the pack but follow instructions to the T keep the
technical lingo to a minimal as to understand. If I did not explain myself
correctly or need more info please state as I desperately need your advice
You mention your ISP (Clearwire). You mention Gmail. So whose e-mail
service are you actually using? Both?
Your ISP has no control over the operation of Google's e-mail service.
So why ask your ISP about problems with Gmail? Your ISP can only help
with the e-mail services that *they* provide.
There are no folders with POP access. POP only understands a mailbox.
ALL your e-mails are in the mailbox. POP has no commands to select or
navigate between folders. It only retrieves messages from a mailbox.
When you use the webmail interface to your account, the server-side
Inbox folder is the mailbox. None of those other server-side folders
are accessible by POP. IMAP will sync with the folders you have defined
in your account and why you got so many folders showing up in Outlook.
You had 6 POP accounts, each with its mailbox, and each had its own
server-side folders but which POP cannot access. When you went to IMAP,
you synchronized to all 5-6 server-side folders (to which you
subscribed) and why the count jumped up to 33 folders across those 6
accounts. So there is nothing strange in the change if folder counts.
Google doesn't obey the RFC standards defining POP so it would be no
surprise that they don't obey RFC standards for IMAP. Their access
protocols should more accurately be called gPOP and gIMAP since Google
has their own definition of how to access their webmail interface. For
example, POP clients issue a RETR (retrieve) followed by a DELE
(delete). Gmail will ignore the DELE, if sent, and instead decide what
to do with an item based on your server-side configuration in your Gmail
account. E-mail clients may send a "TOP n" command to just retrieve the
headers for e-mails and optionally the first n lines of their bodies.
Gmail treats a TOP command like a RETR. Gmail works just well enough to
work with most POP and IMAP clients. It doesn't matter what e-mail
client you use with Gmail as the behaviors are Gmail's.
POP is a simple protocol that was established long before IMAP showed
up. IMAP requires more resources and overhead and sometimes just isn't
implemented well on the server. POP only sees a mailbox, no folders,
and normally follows a RETR with a DELE although you can configure many
e-mail clients to not send the DELE (so you can access that same e-mail
using another e-mail client on the same or different host); however, if
your POP client does send a DELE command then it is up to you to cleanup
your mailbox to prevent from consuming all your disk quota for your
account (some clients have an option to send the DELE command n days
after you retrieve a message to help with cleanup but leave the item in
the mailbox long enough for your other clients to retrieve a copy). POP
has no concept of new versus old for e-mails. All it knows are the
items stored in the mailbox. Your e-mail client tracks what it
retrieved before to know if an item is old or new in the list of items
found currently in your mailbox. IMAP has subscribed folders to contend
with along with synchronization across all of them.
Some users of Outlook, including MVPs, have noted that IMAP support in
Outlook is deficient; i.e., that Outlook's IMAP implementation is
somehow flaky. Yet they haven't elucidated on how IMAP is flaky in
Outlook. Although you mention getting a "smart phone" but never bother
to identify it so someone else that has it could provide help, you never
mentioned if it directly accesses your e-mail account or somehow
synchronizes with Outlook's message store. Did you install software for
the smart phone that included an add-in for Outlook? Or does the phone
just connect directly to Gmail? Are you having the phone sync to your
Gmail at the same time that Outlook is running and might also try to
sync with Gmail? Making multiple connections to the same account but
from different IP addresses can result in problems establishing a mail
session.
.
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