Thunderbird 3 Beta 1

Why IMAP? Because it basically gives me the same features as an exchange server, I can create folders, organise my mail, create sub-sub folders, whatever the hell I need. Last time I used POP3 in an email client I couldn't do that, although I realise that may have changed now. As for the "why bother with T-Bird, just use Outlook". erm. T-bird is free? is that enough of a reason?

Mike you spew opinion and rarely provide support links, often never answer direct questions with an actual answer. 90% of the time you change the subject by answering a question with another question that takes the topic in another direction. Sean Hannity does the EXACT same thing, and is just as annoying, maybe more sore because the sound of his voice makes me queasy, then again I have never hear yours so I will hold that judgment. Really Mike you should get your own blog. www.iamrightyouarewrongmicrosoftisalwaysrightdonttrytotellmedifferent.com

"As for the "why bother with T-Bird, just use Outlook". erm. T-bird is free? is that enough of a reason?" Windows Live Mail is too. It's a consumer product. Outlook is a business product with business-grade PIM and CRM add-on support, and ties into Sharepoint very easily. It's designed for businesses. That's probably why they charge for it.

"Gmail will work with any IMAP client. AOL works with any IMAP client, Mobile Me works with any IMAP client. I am not sure Zimbra is the only IMAP client you can use with Yahoo. Only Hotmail does not provide IMAP support." Thunderbird has been designed to work well with GMail. Yahoo provides free IMAP ONLY with Zimbra and the iPhone. MobileMe is NOT FREE. Hotmail works well with Outlook and Windows Live Mail.

gorath You're really mixing up advantages of various mail clients and various protocols. Things you said were IMAP advantages are actually client features (you can do them via POP3 if your client supports it and can't in IMAP if your client doesn't). That's exactly why I've been pushing for clarity in this discussion. Otherwise we get things like "I was able to do x on client y talking to server z using protocol b but when I tried to do x on a 3 year old version of client f talking to server n using protocol r it didn't work. Therefore protocol r is bad."

The problem I have with Outlook and IMAP is that you CANT get ride of your .PST default folders. So you have two inboxes, one locally (that you dont use) and one on the IMAP server. Outlook is a great POP client since you POP the mail down into your only Inbox. Of course once its moved out of your inbox to another folder with POP3 the server does not know about it. With IMAP if you create another IMAP folder called whatever and move mail into it, its reflected on your client(s) and on the server.....just like Exchange.

Lindy Nope. It also changes how the client has to be written to work around their "funky" design for "read" mail.

millia "Look, I've got 20+ years doing this stuff- and at some point, you just have to say, anybody who gets into a religious war about the 'best-ness' of an established protocol, is just being ridiculous. " True. And in this case, even worse because people really aren't discussing the protocols. They're discussing the protocol as implemented on a client and mixed with discussing that client's features and how those work with a specific server and how that server implements both the protocol and the server and client features. And then they're drawing conclusions about just the protocols from the combinations they've used. POP3 and IMAP are both sufficient protocols to do a decent job on email. In both cases, the weaknesses of the protocol and the vagueries of implementation are masked by clients and servers that work together to do features not inherent to either protocol. If you write email clients or servers, a discussion of the advantages of each protocol makes sense. If not, you're really discussing "Client X talking to Server Y using protocol Z" versus "Client A talking to Server B using protocol C" and probably have no idea or concern about whether the feature you like comes from X or Y or Z or A or B or C. It's the combination that you use and not the component.

Mike, the reason IMAP came into the discussion, as far as I can see it, is because Thunderbird has really, REALLY good support for it.

x3haloed Well, I guess when Paul's on the road we get beta announcements and posts about t-shirts. On the other hand, while he was in Redmond, I'd assume he's learned about several new things to discuss over the next couple of months.

@mikegalos - "You've obviously never had to deal with a DOJ anti-trust case" Thats what the server backups are for...not my inbox or pst files. --tayme

"Thats what the server backups are for...not my inbox or pst files." As I said, you've obviously never had to deal with a DOJ anti-trust case. They wanted both. And if you printed out a message you couldn't throw out or shred the hard copy.

I have restored email for the DOJ/FBI and a few occasions. Any email that can be manipulated by the end user, say .pst file/pop3 account does not hold up in court to well and is often dismissed. Email from Email server backup tapes is golden, provided you can prove that the user in question had no access to the server and or backup process (tapes, backup server etc). I have helped the FBI recover 4 years of Exchange information once onto servers they brought in, some of it going back to Exchange 5.5. It was a loooooong two weeks.

@mikegalos - "As I said, you've obviously never had to deal with a DOJ anti-trust case" In any law suits that I have been involved in, there may have been a period of time where specific folks were instructed to *start* retaining all email, both electronic and printed. But to expect a person to have, after the fact, retained *every* email that they sent or received for something 3 years ago is unreasonable and unrealistic. --tayme

"The problem I have with Outlook and IMAP is that you CANT get ride of your .PST default folders. So you have two inboxes, one locally (that you dont use) and one on the IMAP server." That's actually not true. When I used IMAP, I would set the IMAP account as the default Inbox, and the local folders could then be closed. You only need the local folders if the IMAP server doesn't support sync'ing all folders. Many servers don't, so you need to have an Outbox, Sent Items, etc. That was true in Outlook 2003, which I no longer use. I imagine it still works in 2007 too. IMAP as a protocol is also much slower from my own experience. That could be due to implementation or whathaveyou, but POP3 has always been much faster. Probably most of that has to do with the way it synchronizes with local copies. "Outlook is a great POP client since you POP the mail down into your only Inbox. Of course once its moved out of your inbox to another folder with POP3 the server does not know about it." That's only true with Outlook 2003 and less. 2007 supports multiple sets of folders, one for each separate account, just like Windows Live Mail. 2003 and prior would lump everything together into a single Inbox by default, like Outlook Express. "I was completely underwhelmed with outlook express in the past, and, more recently, Windows Mail." Windows Mail brought some important features to the table, so despite what Paul says, it's a necessary and welcome evolution of Outlook Express. Those features are: unsafe attachment blocking, image blocking by unknown senders, spam filtering, and a phishing filter, among others. Outlook Express didn't have those. Windows Live Mail just cleans up the interface, and separates email accounts into separate sets of folders, thereby making it easy to see which Inbox belongs to which account. It also turns on the "leave messages on the server" option be default for POP3 accounts, and supports syncing of contacts with Windows Live Contacts, if you have a Windows Live ID. The next version adds Windows Live Calendar options and cleans up the UI by using text buttons rather than icons. It's easier to comprehend the functionality by reading text than by trying to understand the nature of an icon, especially for new users. If you've ever had a customer support job trying to describe an icon to someone that they're supposed to click, rather than saying "Click REPLY", you'd know that people will immediately identify what you mean when they just read what's on the screen. It's just a much better program than Thunderbird. ....AND it supports IMAP.

@DRWAM - "This rose pic is not displaying well." Even on that $400 laptop? --tayme