UP TO SPEEDPOP, IMAP, and Web-based Mail

When it comes to email, there are three flavors of accounts (not counting America Online Mail, which is a mutant breed and not something that Outlook Express can talk to): POP (also known as POP3), IMAP (also known as IMAP4), and Web-based. Each has its own distinct feeling, with different strengths and weaknesses.

POP accounts are the most common kind. A POP server transfers your incoming mail to your hard drive before you read it, and then deletes its Internet-based copy. From now on, those messages are stored on your computer, and it’s up to you to save them, back them up, or delete them. (You can configure Outlook Express not to delete the messages from the server, but most ISPs don’t give you much disk space. If your mailbox gets too full, the server may begin rejecting your incoming messages.)

IMAP servers are newer than, and have more features than, POP servers, but as a result they don’t enjoy as much popularity or support. IMAP servers are Internet computers that store all of your mail for you, rather than making you download it each time you connect, so you can access the same mail regardless of the computer you use. IMAP servers remember which messages you’ve read and sent, too.

One downside to this approach, of course, is that you can’t work with your email except when you’re online, because all of your mail is on an Internet server, not on your hard drive. Another is that if you don’t conscientiously manually delete mail after you’ve read it, your online mailbox eventually overflows. Sooner or later, the system starts bouncing fresh messages back to their senders, annoying your friends and depriving you of the chance to read what they had to say.

Free, Web-based servers like Hotmail also store your mail on the Internet. You can use a Web browser on any computer to read and send messages—or, if it’s Hotmail, Outlook Express (because both are Microsoft products). They’re also slower and more cumbersome to use than “regular” email accounts.

GEM IN THE ROUGHChecking a Specific Email Account

You don’t have to check all of your email accounts whenever you want to get mail. Suppose, for example, that you want to send a message to yourself—from your work account to your home account. In that case, you’d want to send/receive mail only from your office account. (If, in the same pass, Outlook Express also downloaded messages from your home account, you’d wind up with the same message in your office PC’s copy of Outlook Express, defeating the whole purpose of the exercise.)

Excluding an account (or several accounts) from the “Send and Receive All” routine is easy enough. Open the Accounts window (Tools→Accounts), double-click the account’s name, turn off “Include this account when receiving Mail or synchronizing,” click OK, and close the Accounts window.

Now suppose you usually want to check all accounts, but occasionally want to check only one of them. On such an occasion, choose that account’s name from the drop-down list that appears when you click the down-arrow black triangle beside the Send/Recv button. (Alternatively, choose the account name from the Tools→Send and Receive submenu.)