E-mail Clients

[Timothy G. Kambitsch]

What you really should be looking at is IMAP clients.  The popular POP mail
client products, like Eudora, assume you want to download all the new
messages to your hard drive and delete them off your mail server.

IMAP can be configured to do the same thing, but where it really shines
is the ability to only download during the session mail directories and
message summary lines.  As you read each message it gets downloaded to
the PC.  As you delete, reply and otherwise manipulate your message, the
IMAP client will keep track of those changes.  When you logout, the IMAP
client send al the updated activity to the server, such as deleting messages
marking them as read, etc.  That way your mail always gets saved to one
location.

This approach means that you can read your mail via a host based client
if you are on the road and can only telnet back to read mail. In your
office you can read it form a PC with a graphic client.

IMAP also allows one machine to be used my many people.  Since everything
stays on the server, you don't need to worry about what mail others might
read.

Whether to use IMAP over POP is not a simple question, but you start your
reading at http://www.imap.org.


Tim

>At 8:18 AM -0700 6/18/1997, rodrigue.real at uqam.ca wrote:
>
>
>* What you want is indeed feasible. You can use, for example, Eudora Light
>* (to download: <http://www.eudora.com>), and set up different Preferences
>* sets for each of your users; you can then call Eudora by using the
>* appropriate Preferences file (or an alias of this file in the Apple
>* Menu, for example). The only problem is that Eudora will allow only one
>* Preferences file open at a time; you have to close Eudora and open it
>* again using one of the other Preferences files when a different user
>* wants to read his/her mail.
>
>I don't think Eudora needs to be closed to take advantage of the separate
>Settings files.  I've simply clicked on a Settings file for a different
>user and Eudora "assumes" this new identity.
>
>The one drawback to this is the inability to protect/hide each users email
>from the other users.  I don't think Eudora can handle this.  If I'm not
>mistaken, the email already on the local machine can be read by anybody
>launching Eudora.

Tim Kambitsch <mailto:kambitsch at dayton.lib.oh.us>
Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library
937-227-9560  fax:  937-227-9524
215 East Third Street, Dayton OH 45402