[ale] Best MTA?

[Paul Cartwright]

On Mon May 15 2006 10:47 pm, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> Can I get a bit of backfill clarification here? ?Someday, I want to
> get to a point where all the in-house machines and even the laptops
> that go "in the wild" can point to some sort of mail server that I
> manage such that no one machine "possesses" any of the e-mail
> accounts. ?I assume that this would mean that the laptops in the
> wild will have to penetrate my firewall, hopefully in an encrypted
> fashion, to do this. ?I should also state that I would like the
> laptops and maybe even the in-house desktops to have local copies of
> all the mail folders so that they can still work with messages
> without having to actually reach the mail server.
>
> How would a setup like that look?

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Cyrus-IMAP.html#s2
2.1 What is IMAP?

This definition is from the ComputerUser.com High-Tech Dictionary:

Internet Message Access Protocol. A protocol that allows a user to 
perform certain electronic mail functions on a remote server rather 
than on a local computer. Through IMAP the user can create, delete, or 
rename mailboxes; get new messages; delete messages; and perform 
search functions on mail. A separate protocol is required for sending 
mail. Also called Internet Mail Access Protocol.

2.2 IMAP vs. POP

IMAP allows the user to read email from many different locations and 
accounts because email folders are stored on the server, locally, at 
the home or the office, for instance. Even saved and read messages are 
stored on the IMAP server. POP only stores new unread messages on the 
server, and the read and saved messages are stored locally. To force 
POP to not delete email once it has been read can create many copies 
of the same email, creating a waste of space and confusion. However, 
IMAP is usually more complicated to set up. If you only have one email 
account, POP is most likely your best choice. If you want to access 
more than one account, from different locations, IMAP will probably 
serve you most efficiently.

-- 
Paul Cartwright
Registered Linux user # 367800
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