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From: sanders@parc.xerox.com (Rex Sanders)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
Subject: Re: Desktop Mail in the University Environment
Message-ID: <1991Feb10.061918.5355@parc.xerox.com>
Date: 10 Feb 91 06:19:18 GMT
References: <3348@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> <1991Feb10.022029.105@parc.xerox.com> <1991Feb10.033212.1320@csun.edu>
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In article <1991Feb10.033212.1320@csun.edu> mst@secs.csun.edu (Mike Temkin) writes:
>Okay Rex, I fail to see the difference between keeping your mail on a POP
>host and keeping it on an IMAP host.  Both mean that the mail will be taking
>up disk space somewhere (unless you know something the rest of us don't).

- With Eudora/POP, *every* piece of mail you ever received is stored in
  cronological order in one file on the server (if you don't delete ALL
  of it).  Each time a POP client requests new mail, a serial search is
  done (in current implementations), meaning longer response times as
  you receive more mail.

- With IMAP, you sort your mountain of incoming mail into different
  categories, and *throw away* the messages you no longer care about.
  Only the mail you want to keep is stored on the server, separately
  from your incoming mail.

I get more than 100 mail messages a day, about 5,000 kilobytes of mail
a week.  I save about 170 kilobytes a week.  I know many other people
with similar or larger mail volumes.

>Unless a DELE command is specifically sent to the POP server, the mail will
>remain.  Above you state that it "is basically "download from mainframe and
>delete" this is clearly incorrect.  The fault for this is in the client,
>not the server.

The POP *server* has no selective delete, save, search, and retrieve functions.
Eudora can do all of those, *on your Mac's local hard disk*.  You cannot
realistically expect your mail server to keep every piece of mail you ever
received.  With Eudora, you can see your old mail only by deleting it from
the server.

>You also point out that IMAP is available on platforms other than UNIX,
>well so is POP.

I only meant to point out IMAP's availability, not imply that POP wasn't
widely available.

-- Rex
   sanders.parc@xerox.com