Now I realise many of my readers have more than one place that they check their emails. I personally have two that I use frequently, and one that I use not as frequently, but still does occur. Now as most people would realise, you download it in one place, you don’t get it on the other. That is due to the nature of POP mail. There is one alternative that many people are unaware of. This is called IMAP.

IMAP works off a different system, one that gmail can utilise because of it’s large server space, (4.3 gig the last time I checked, and still growing), because it works off keeping a copy of your mail on the server. The IMAP service allows the user to download only the message headers and decide if they want to actually download the rest of the message and the attachments. IMAP was designed to overcome some of the issues that POP had. It allows a user to download the message headers and allows the user to decide whether or not to download the rest of the message, so therefore messages are kept on a server, and are only downloaded when a user requests them, and this is great for people who are constantly mobile.

Some advantages of IMAP over POP are:

• Folders for storing received and sent messages
• Freedom for user to download attachments at will
• Server-based searching and selection to minimize data transfer.
• Ability to append messages to a remote folder.
• Ability to set standard and user-defined message status flags.
• Support for simultaneous update and update discovery in shared folders.
• New mail notification.
• Ability to manipulate remote folders other than INBOX.
• Remote folder management.
• Support for folder hierarchies.
• When a client program performs any operation on a mailbox, the server will automatically include in its response notification of any new messages that have arrived since the last notification.
• IMAP’s ability to manipulate remote folders other than INBOX is fundamental to online and disconnected operation. This means being able to save messages from one folder to a different one, being able to access archived messages subsequently, and allowing for multiple incoming message folders.

So this can come in handy for many of you out there, and I highly recommend you check out the features of your new abilities in gmail, oh and just in case you are wondering, it is 100% free, you just have to enable IMAP in your user settings, then set-up your email client, and you are good to go!