It seems like IMAP needs a bit more work to be truly useable. Folder
behavior is a bit funny, and sometimes the folder list says I have a
new message, but it doesn't show up in the message list (webmail shows the new message). I am sure the developers are focussing on improving IMAP?
I've not been able to use TB!'s IMAP without severe problems unless I'm connected at LAN speeds.
I was just in Toronto, Canada last week, and while I was there, I used a DSL connection to access my IMAP server at home. My home DSL is 256KBps upload and the DSL speed in Canada was 256KBps download.
I *still* couldn't quickly read mail. In fact, I spent all of one
morning patiently waiting for TB! to sort itself out, synchronising
headers in the various folders. I eventually got tired of waiting and subscribed only a few vital folders. Still no joy. I couldn't browse the folders since messages were taking *forever* to load. I think I successfully loaded 3 messages over a 4 hour period of intermittent attempts.
I initially thought my problem with TB!'s IMAP at work was based on my having to use an HTTP tunnel to get through to my server. However, I was still having serious problems despite not using an HTTP tunnel from Canada.
I eventually gave up, installed ThunderBird, and was working with the
folders and messages not much more slowly than if they were available
locally. I had to wait a couple minutes for the TB List folders to sync
several thousand headers but after that it was VERY comfortable reading.
The difference is depressing to experience and ThunderBird, despite it's shortcomings is the clear one to use away from home for me. It's the only one really to use.
I'm really concerned about this and wonder if the developers have been testing TB!'s IMAP only on an LAN connection. It works quite well there but things go really downhill when things are slower as it so commonly is.
I still use IMAP because it's really neat to use at home. I can manage mail from my desktop in my study and from my laptop and be fully up to date from either machine without having to do a syc operation. I can also switch between SecureBat! and TB! at will since it's IMAP and I can therefore just use either client as I feel like. The flexibility is addictive and I'm willing to use ThunderBird at work to be able to work with IMAP and TB! at home.
-- -=[ Allie Martin ]=- | List Moderator PGPKeys: http://key.ac-martin.com - Sadly using ThunderBird v0.5 on XP Pro
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