[geeks] personal mail handling

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, January 21, 2002 at 22:17:49 (-0500), Big Endian wrote: ]
> Subject: [geeks] personal mail handling
>
> I know many of you use IMAP for email access.  I'm considering moving 
> to a more centralized system here and I'm wondering why IMAP works 
> for you and how you have your system setup otherwise.

I don't currently use IMAP (direct spool file access, and POP3), but I
can tell you why IMAP is better.  :-)  (I will inevitably set up Cyrus
on my own mail server and will probably move to using IMAP exclusively
once I do that.)

IMAP gives a proper multi-client view of shared mail folders, including
your "inbox".  You normally keep all your mail on the mail server, only
downloading what you want to read or save locally.  Access from
everywhere/anywhere works cleanly and transparently.  Shared mail
accounts are much easier to use and to administer too (eg. a virtual
"support" mailbox, or whatever).

It's also a lot easier to use the likes of SSL to secure your
connection.  With many modern IMAP clients there's no need to set up SSH
tunnels, or emply special inetd wrappers, etc.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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