If you have ever found yourself setting up your Internet service provides email on your preferred email program (Outlook/Thunderbird/Windows Live Mail/ect) and wondered which settings you should use (POP3 or IMAP) here is the definitive answer.
IMAP – plain and simple, here’s the why…..
Persistent connection
With POP3 you will find that every few minutes your email program will download new messages – IMAP will however maintains a persistent connection and so a new email appears in your inbox the moment it is sent.
Two way communication
With 90% (made up percentage but in my experience its around that) of POP3 accounts every time you download new messages onto your PC they are taken off your web mail account. This can cause problems if you ever use both the web mail version of your account (where you log in to a website to view your mail) as well as the mail program on your PC.
Further more if you rely on sorting your messages into folders or if you use the sent items folder then you will find with POP3 any folders you create will only appear on your PC and not on your web mail account.
IMAP dosn’t have any of these problems so anything you see in your mail program on your PC is the same as you will see on your web mail.
So to sum up
If you are a bit of a power user and use your email on the web mail (when you are on holiday say), at home on your PC and also on your mobile using IMAP is the only way to go.
Ultimately however I’d suggest you avoid using your ISPs email service and opt for something like Windows Live Hotmail on the grounds that if you change your ISP you can expect all of your old emails and most importantly your email address to be lost forever.