A Guide to Controlling Email on all of your devices (POP Vs IMAP and Exchange)

A recurring theme nowadays when speaking with friends and clients, something we all have and one of the topics that is least talked about improving with our friends over a coffee, (are we too embarrassed?) is ..

EMAIL - and our inability to control it.

The biggest things that have happened around email in the past 10 years are the way we access it, the volumes we receive and how many devices we access the same account with. This, on top of having multiple email accounts (work, home, spam) provide us with a complex beast to tame.

A background on how email technologies have evolved starts with *shudder* POP email.

POP technology was used when the internet was billed per time and email was used mainly corporately on the single machine you sat at. No other devices or users were present. You logged onto the internet, downloaded your email and it deleted off the email server, ready to fill again with email you received from co-workers, friends and family.

Whilst POP email worked well for a long time, the technology is focussed around 1 device. Once multiple devices access or send email, there is nothing linking that email back to a central place to be able to search, sort or file. In a sense, once the account is created on each and every new device, it is its own identity. It downloads its own copies and becomes estranged from any other device doing the same thing on the same account ID. Sent mail from your iPhone, is not accessible on your Mac, or webmail.

Most ISPs (iiNet, BigPond, TPG etc) give you POP email accounts. They are free, and when you change your ISP you usually need to change your email address. Your email is not backed up on the mail server. It is now only stored on the device it was received on. Make sure if you use this, you have a machine/user data backup.

IMAP is the next step in the evolution of email. It allows you to cache or duplicate the mail server storage of your inbox and folder structure on each and every device you connected your email address to. GREAT! Now the mail you send to your friends are on the server in the sent mail folder, and the items you archived are in their corresponding folders - at work, at home, on the web. No more deleting emails you have already deleted on another device.

This means you need a mailbox storage limit equivalent to how much email you need to keep hold of. Most web-host providers include POP/IMAP support.

Inherently, the data on your computer is a copy of what is on the mail server. Depending on the mail host, you may still need to ensure a local user data backup is in place to feel secure in your data. What is fantastic about IMAP (and Exchange) is that if you need to work on another machine due to loss, failure etc - reconfiguring a new machine will re-download the contents of the mail server account.

Apple mail has had outstanding IMAP support and the integration with Google mail via IMAP has been fantastic. Sadly Outlook on the PC and IMAP integration is poorly executed with Mozilla's Firefox a better solution. Outlook and Microsoft have focussed their efforts on Exchange, the next style of email system.

Exchange technology is best known for its server-based email, contacts and calendaring. Microsoft Exchange, Kerio Mail, The Rain Cloud all use this style of connection to give fully functional and powerful productivity - all harmoniously in sync.

Data can be set to PUSH on mobile devices, meaning when changes are detected on the server from any device/user, connected instances of the account are then TOLD to update, rather than requiring to periodically check for new info (Pull).

Just like IMAP, the data is stored centrally on a mail server, whose larger data storage is generally a part of a backup profile. Multiple accounts can access and synchronise data. Sharing calendaring and contacts amongst co-workers, family etc is possible.

Summary:

• Don't use POP (unless you absolutely have to)
• Use synchronous email technology (IMAP & Exchange) such as Gmail (Google) that give server-based email solutions.
• Try to avoid ISP email accounts as your primary account - they are almost always POP.
• Don't use POP :)

If you are deleting the same SPAM email or annoying chain email from your "friends" on all the devices you check your email on, then now is the time to do something about it.

Call or email Max Computing Services to get your email in order. Take back those lost minutes deleting email and start enjoying the extra time spent with friends and family.

www.maxcomputing.com.au