IMAP is a completely different method of managing your emails although interestingly you can use exactly the same applications so Outlook, Outlook express etc. IMAP is becoming one of the most popular forms of accessing emails now. The easiest way to think of IMAP is that the emails no longer exist on your computer but instead you're using your email application to look straight onto the email server. Basically you look at the mailbox that resides on the server as if it were local to your computer. Messages are not downloaded and deleted immediately, but reside on the server. This has several advantages; firstly and perhaps most importantly changes are reflected through any device which accesses the emails. So you read, reply or delete an email these changes will be reflected 'everywhere' that has access to this account. This obviously also has great advantages when a mailbox is shared between users or multiple devices. |
