"The Great Debate" - POP vs IMAP (fork of Mail Problems)

[Jim Witte]

Hi,

   Tell me if this has been hashed out here and other places YEARS  
ago when I wasn't watching..

   Which do people think is better.  I personally like POP, eve  
though no one else seems to - it was simple (logon, authenticate  
[weak, but it could have been changed in POP2 or something], download  
mail, delete it, logoff)  One of the supposed advantages (at least so  
said by the IU Knowledge Base) is that IMAP is actually more  
efficient than POP.  But with IMAP, potentially *everything* you  
save, send, recieve etc requires communication with the server.  This  
does allow for queing of requests and load balancing and all for  
differ-net users (variations on the bin-packing problem)

   But IMAP always seem to have problems for me - it seems slow  
(perhaps BECAUSE of that load-balancing it's doing), it sometimes  
says it's syncronized, and then I get nothing - I don't know if it's  
because there really is nothing there, or if it's because something  
screwed up  with the client - so I occasionally have to log in to the  
webmail interface to check - which wastes my time (a little) and  
their resources (but hey, they have a lot, as long as there wireless  
network functions the way it does..  don't get me started on that..   
And students download legal and illlegal content and porn..)

   POP just seemed a whole lot simpler to me.

Jim