Gmail IMAP Vs POP
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From: Andy Hewitt on 1 Aug 2010 10:44 I've spent the last few days trying to find the ideal solution, yet again, for handling my emails. As I handle quite a few accounts, some personal, and a few for the church, it is proving to be a bit tricky. Not one solution seems to work 100%, but most of the issues seem to stem from Google's implementation of IMAP. I have been trialling their IMAP service over the last few weeks (it's easy enough to switch between the two) in Mail.app, but my conclusion is that it sucks. After much fiddling and tweaking I kind of got a setup that was kind of OK, but it still worked out non-optimal for many tasks, such as filing, and using my filters to auto-file messages. All to easy you can end up with multiple copies of emails all over the shop. I have also thoroughly tested this using other clients too, Thunderbird, Postbox, Eudora and Opera, but with little real difference. Although these are mostly Thunderbird based, they also seem to be really horrible in one way or another. Most of them have serious bugs, some of which just result in a blank message list unless you restart, or a mess of folders all over the place, and various hacks to get simple things to work. Unified mailboxes, which are there in Thunderbird, but just don't seem to work reliably, and are non-existant in the others. For all the criticism that MobileMe gets, I would never have realised it was IMAP if I didn't know, it integrates seamlessly with Mail, but also works perfectly well with all the other clients, and over the last year has been a very reliable service. Is it just me, or is Google becoming the 'New Microsoft'? They have a plethora of 'Beta' applications, and if you install them, they seem to get installed all over the shop, and they're full of bugs and poor design (such as the auto updater that gets installed). So, it's back to Mail and switching the Gmail accounts back to POP, which is by far the best solution I can figure out, although still not quite what I was after. What I really want are the benefits of IMAP (the ability the keep messages on a server, accessible from different locations), but with the seamless integration you get with multiple POP accounts (i.e. single In and Sent boxes). As you can tell, that was a tiny bit of a rant :-) -- Andy Hewitt <http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/>
From: Jochem Huhmann on 1 Aug 2010 16:49 thewildrover(a)me.com (Andy Hewitt) writes: > I've spent the last few days trying to find the ideal solution, yet > again, for handling my emails. As I handle quite a few accounts, some > personal, and a few for the church, it is proving to be a bit tricky. > > Not one solution seems to work 100%, but most of the issues seem to stem > from Google's implementation of IMAP. I have been trialling their IMAP > service over the last few weeks (it's easy enough to switch between the > two) in Mail.app, but my conclusion is that it sucks. After much > fiddling and tweaking I kind of got a setup that was kind of OK, but it > still worked out non-optimal for many tasks, such as filing, and using > my filters to auto-file messages. > > All to easy you can end up with multiple copies of emails all over the > shop. I'm not really using Gmail, but just in case I've bookmarked this article, which gives lots of useful information: http://db.tidbits.com/article/10253 > Is it just me, or is Google becoming the 'New Microsoft'? They have a > plethora of 'Beta' applications, and if you install them, they seem to > get installed all over the shop, and they're full of bugs and poor > design (such as the auto updater that gets installed). Absolutely, yes. Jochem -- "A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
From: Andy Hewitt on 1 Aug 2010 18:21 Jochem Huhmann <joh(a)gmx.net> wrote: > thewildrover(a)me.com (Andy Hewitt) writes: > > > I've spent the last few days trying to find the ideal solution, yet > > again, for handling my emails. As I handle quite a few accounts, some > > personal, and a few for the church, it is proving to be a bit tricky. > > > > Not one solution seems to work 100%, but most of the issues seem to stem > > from Google's implementation of IMAP. I have been trialling their IMAP > > service over the last few weeks (it's easy enough to switch between the > > two) in Mail.app, but my conclusion is that it sucks. After much > > fiddling and tweaking I kind of got a setup that was kind of OK, but it > > still worked out non-optimal for many tasks, such as filing, and using > > my filters to auto-file messages. > > > > All to easy you can end up with multiple copies of emails all over the > > shop. > > I'm not really using Gmail, but just in case I've bookmarked this > article, which gives lots of useful information: > http://db.tidbits.com/article/10253 Oh wow, that's brilliant. That's just about fixed all the problems I was having - basically you completely ignore how Google tells you to set up Mail. Cheers. -- Andy Hewitt <http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/>
From: Martin S Taylor on 3 Aug 2010 03:43 Andy Hewitt wrote > So, it's back to Mail and switching the Gmail accounts back to POP, > which is by far the best solution I can figure out, although still not > quite what I was after. What I really want are the benefits of IMAP (the > ability the keep messages on a server, accessible from different > locations), but with the seamless integration you get with multiple POP > accounts (i.e. single In and Sent boxes). I too tried Gmail IMAP and hated it. I don't really understand your criticism of IMAP, though. Why don't you get single In and Sent boxes? I use several IMAP accounts, and in mail.app incoming mail all appears in one Inbox and sent mail all in one Sent box. MST
From: ray on 3 Aug 2010 04:38
Martin S Taylor <mst(a)hRyEpMnOoVtEiTsHm.cIo.uSk> wrote: > Andy Hewitt wrote > > So, it's back to Mail and switching the Gmail accounts back to POP, > > which is by far the best solution I can figure out, although still not > > quite what I was after. What I really want are the benefits of IMAP (the > > ability the keep messages on a server, accessible from different > > locations), but with the seamless integration you get with multiple POP > > accounts (i.e. single In and Sent boxes). > > I too tried Gmail IMAP and hated it. > > I don't really understand your criticism of IMAP, though. Why don't you get > single In and Sent boxes? I use several IMAP accounts, and in mail.app > incoming mail all appears in one Inbox and sent mail all in one Sent box. > The way I manage email is I have one mobile me account and several pop accounts on domain names, plus 2 gmail IMAP accounts. All forward mail to the mobile me account. The gmail accounts allow me to send mail from my primary business domain name, the other domain names have specific send accounts set up so I can use the smtp server to send replies. Mail makes it easy to specify which smtp server to use for any account. All the pop and gmail accounts are set up in mail but set offline so they don't check for mail and nothing ever appears in the mail boxes. I only have to check one email account, the mobile me one, which is IMAP. The mobile me rules are good enough to handle any filtering and of course I have SpamSieve. If I need to check anything on the gmail accounts, mark as read or delete anything, I can easily do it from mail by bringing the accounts briefly online. Google deletes spam over 30 days old anyway. I find this works for me, and I really don't like what gmail IMAP does in Mail or any other email app I've tried it with. -- http://www.dream-weaver.com/email.php Web development promotion and seo http://www.spaldingcomputers.co.uk http://www.overseasmovingsolutions.com/ |