[jeff k]

I have personal file sharing working well for files and folders.

Over my router, files from my desktop G5 can be worked on from my laptop in the other room.

Question:
What about an app like Outlook Express or Entourage?

Is there a way I can get the same copy of Entourage live working on my desktop G5 to work over the router on the laptop?

If so, I could check e mail, move folders around on laptop knowing that when I return to the G5 everything is in the same exact order. thanks!

[besson3c]

Why? Use an IMAP account, store everything on the server, call it a day. You don't need to do more than this to keep everything perfectly in sync.

[Art Vandelay]

You can run an app over the network that way as long as it's a properly designed app. However, those apps that you listed also have their data stored in the G5's Home folder. If you launch it on the laptop, the data won't be there on the laptop's Home folder.

[jeff k]

But I have files and folders that go over the router now which I work on laptop and are actually originating from the G5.

IMAP, you mean Google or Yahoo mail, web based? But I'm comfortable with Entourage and the beauty of moving and saving email on my hardrive, not the same, right?

[Art Vandelay]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

But I have files and folders that go over the router now which I work on laptop and are actually originating from the G5.

Right, but these programs are looking for their data files to be in the Home folder of the computer you're sitting at. They won't know to look at the Home folder on the G5 when you run them over the network on the laptop.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

But I have files and folders that go over the router now which I work on laptop and are actually originating from the G5.

IMAP, you mean Google or Yahoo mail, web based? But I'm comfortable with Entourage and the beauty of moving and saving email on my hardrive, not the same, right?

IMAP = mail is saved to the server. All major email clients including Entourage support it, it's just a matter of whether your email provider does too. If they do you can setup Entourage to use IMAP instead of POP, as you should.

POP is, in my opinion, a pretty bad idea for most people. With POP your email is tethered to the computer you are on, and in the event of a computer failure and you have no good backup you are toast. IMAP overall is simply a much more practical way to handle your email, and it provides a lot of features and functionality you can't get easily or at all with POP.

[Big Mac]

The guys are right, jeff. If you want to share email between computers use IMAP. You can still keep copies of messages on your drives, but IMAP is what you want to use.

[jeff k]

Thanks guy. It's hard to get my head around IMAP, been POP al my life. With IMAP though, I will have to do a send/receive again on G5 later in the day -- and then what I sent out on laptop wont be in sent folder on G5. Also, if I start organziing emails on laptop, that wont reflect later on G5. right? Also, there is an option in Entourage to keep emails on server. Isn't that just as good as doing IMAP?

Finally, no way possible to achieve file sharing ie for Entourage as I do now with files?
What I would really love is for Entourage to work over the router. (ie file sharing)
For example, over the router, I can work on excel and word files on the laptop and I am essentially working on files from the G5 hardrive.

Any chance this could work for Entourage? ie, I'm on Entourage on laptop, yet all activity is mirrored exactly as G5 is?

[besson3c]

jeff: I would start learning more about the differences between IMAP and POP, there is a wealth of information out there about these differences. It is exactly what you need.

With an IMAP account you can setup not only our Inbox, but also your other mailboxes (sent, drafts, etc.) to reside on the server. The end result of this is that every time you open up a client and sync with your mailbox on the server (which it will do automatically), what you see is exactly the same no matter where you access it from.

Leaving messages on the server with a POP account is not the same, as POP has no concept of message flags, so when you download these again on another machine they will not be marked as read, replied to, or any other flag. To me this setting is a pointless way to force a protocol to simulate another, it is much easier to just reconfigure your account to use IMAP rather than POP.

All of the other stuff you have said about file sharing becomes completely irrelevant as far as mail is concerned with an IMAP account. This applies to not only Entourage, but any other mail program you would use to access your account from anywhere, including web based email systems.

Don't feel bad that you have never run into IMAP before, a lot of people haven't. IMAP has been around for a very long time, but some internet providers insist on only providing POP because it is cheaper for them to do so and it requires less to support. In a perfect world POP would have died years ago, in addition to FTP.

[jeff k]

Besson,
thanks.
Ok, so I can do IMAP with Entourage. I'm with Verizon now as ISP. Are they ok with IMAP?

Now, do you agree that if a person is just doing email from one computer only the POP is better with Entourage?

Now if I did IMAP with Entourage, then it's kind of like a webased account but with Entourage?
ie, everything sources from one source -- somewhere online?

Still, it would be just perfect/ seamless if as I asked before, my laptop could work Entourage over the router, but others have suggested that is not possible.

[tooki]

Yes, IMAP is like webmail. Actually, it's more accurate that most webmail accounts are simply web access to an IMAP account!

It really is what you need, it's so much easier than any workaround with POP.

[jeff k]

Tooki,
How can I test it our with one account on Entourage to see what it feels like?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

Besson,
thanks.
Ok, so I can do IMAP with Entourage. I'm with Verizon now as ISP. Are they ok with IMAP?

I have no idea, you'll have to research this on your own or ask them.

Now, do you agree that if a person is just doing email from one computer only the POP is better with Entourage?

No, POP is not better than IMAP in any way, shape, or form. For instance, if your computer dies and you have no backup, your mail is lost. When your mail is stored on a server, the disks are of much higher quality and generally build off of a RAID array or SAN so that one or even multiple disks dying does not lead to a loss of data.

Now if I did IMAP with Entourage, then it's kind of like a webased account but with Entourage?
ie, everything sources from one source -- somewhere online?

The web has nothing to do with it. I suggest you Google the differences between POP and IMAP since my explanations don't seem to help.

Still, it would be just perfect/ seamless if as I asked before, my laptop could work Entourage over the router, but others have suggested that is not possible.

It would be a pain in the ass. You'd need to leave the machine hosting the mail store on at all times, you'd have file locking issues (where both machines try to access the same file at once) and given the fact that Entourage is a pretty poorly designed email client to begin with that is particularly prone to database corruption, adding this variable into the picture would really be asking for it. Seamless is not a word I'd use.

IMAP is a good change for you regardless of this, I wouldn't waste time and effort looking further into this other idea you originally conceived.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

Tooki,
How can I test it our with one account on Entourage to see what it feels like?

Sure, create yourself a GMail account or something (they offer IMAP) and try it out if you want.

[jeff k]

Besson:
1) How long does your mail stay on server? month? 5 years? If they are there arvhived for long time, I can see some value in that, especially if they are searchable. Must take a hug amount of space though.
2) Can I grab some of the emails to save -- they are .eml files on my hardrive.
3) If I lose my laptop, I suppose I would want to change all passwords for all accounts?
4) what email client do you use -- and why this choice?

Playing devils advocate, thanks for great info. I'm on Entourage for 7 years POP, it's all I know and am used to.

Tookie: Gmail: I have 28 email accounts spread out over four websites I own and 7 Verizon accounts.

[ibook_steve]

1) Mail stays on the server forever, unless you delete it. All web mail, including Gmail, Yahoo, and MobileMe are essentially IMAP. You get a certain amount of allocated space on the server, but it's huge. I've had a mac.com address since it was called iTools, and I'm not even close to running out of server space.
2) With IMAP, you usually can still see the emails you've already viewed, even if you are offline. This is just a setting in your mail client software.
3) I guess. That's up to you.
4) Mail, or a web browser. I personally have given up on Entourage. As besson said, it's terrible.

Steve

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

Besson:
1) How long does your mail stay on server? month? 5 years? If they are there arvhived for long time, I can see some value in that, especially if they are searchable. Must take a hug amount of space though.

Most email providers have given up on enforcing quotas, because it is cheaper to just add more disk than it is to support this. The messages will be there until you delete them.

2) Can I grab some of the emails to save -- they are .eml files on my hardrive.

Once your IMAP account is setup you can just drag and drop the messages you want to keep into the folders you want them to go.

3) If I lose my laptop, I suppose I would want to change all passwords for all accounts?

I'm not following you here. This would be if you use the same password for your email as you do for your OS X account?

4) what email client do you use -- and why this choice?

I personally use and prefer Postbox, but many people in here prefer OS X Mail.

Playing devils advocate, thanks for great info. I'm on Entourage for 7 years POP, it's all I know and am used to.

I don't think that you have anything to risk in exploring other options. If you are content with the model of having your email completely tethered to your OS X account, and never wish to access your email from another computer, and are very confident with your backup solution, I suppose there is no pressing need to switch. For most people though, they can't accurately claim all of these things to be true.

[jeff k]

Thanks guys,
if lost my laptop, anyone could check my emails. So I suppose you would want to change all email accounts no?

What's the deal with Entourage. I thought it was the most sophisticated client ever made?

I'm definitly checking this out.

[jeff k]

PS,
What about all files/ folders I currently have in POP, can they go to IMAP asap?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

What's the deal with Entourage. I thought it was the most sophisticated client ever made?

I'm sorry, but who told you that ? Monkey boy ?

-t

[tooki]

Entourage is a great email client. There are also other great email clients. The joy of IMAP is that since the email client is essentially a "viewer" for what's going on on the server, you can try out multiple email clients at the same time on the same account.

I eventually switched to Apple Mail, which is very slick, but I always liked Entourage.

As for the folders you have in POP: those folders exist only locally, in your current Entourage. But you can set up your IMAP account(s) in Entourage, re-create those folders on the IMAP server, and then upload all those messages to the IMAP server.

[jeff k]

Turtle:
I guess it was the crowd on the Entourage boards. but what bugs you about it? curious

Tooki, nice info.
Why switch to Mail?

Again, I've only know Entourage, and long time before outlook express which is close

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

Turtle:
I guess it was the crowd on the Entourage boards. but what bugs you about it? curious

No integration of Spotlight search
Bad integration with TimeMachine backup (all mails are stored in one big database file, hence, the whole file has to be backed up every single time)
No TimeMachine support for individual messages
Don't like the GUI
Lacking integration with Addressbook

(to be fair, I don't know Entourage 2008, so maybe some of the shortcomings have been addressed)

-t

[besson3c]

My biggest problem with Entourage is its extremely goofy and corruption prone mailbox format, and how this couples with backup systems.

[besson3c]

Also, Entourage's weak and incomplete support for their company's own product (Exchange) for many, many, many years (and possibly even still to this day) certainly doesn't give one a whole lot of confidence in the product.

[jeff k]

Ok, just tested my very first ever emails with IMAP.
Very cool, couple quesitons though:

1) With POP, there is just one INBOX and all my 20 emails accuonts receive email in it. With IMAP I see an INBOX created just for the one test email account I made. Am I going to see a long list of 20 inboxes and 20 drafts and 20 sent boxes and 20 spams etc. There a way to unify it all to 1 INBOX?

2) There seems to be some serious time delays with IMAP. I'm so used to sending test emails and insantly seeing it come in my inbox. I sent test and it was mintues before it came -- especially slow with the laptop over the router/ie wifi.

Still, I'm now leaning to swithing it all over, but these issues caught my eye right away.

Turtle,
thanks, I'm still with Entourage 2004. I don't use those features you mentioned too much, though search may be one I would like to use more in the future. Especially now that I could search emails back years...

Besson, thanks, I use a seperate backup software for my files, but with IMAP, isn't the backup issue moot? Also, support, what support, all support is on forums like this basically. Though I think you can call Microsoft for a year or something like that.

[steve626]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

No integration of Spotlight search
Bad integration with TimeMachine backup (all mails are stored in one big database file, hence, the whole file has to be backed up every single time)
No TimeMachine support for individual messages
Don't like the GUI
Lacking integration with Addressbook

(to be fair, I don't know Entourage 2008, so maybe some of the shortcomings have been addressed)

-t

Entourage 2008 does have Spotlight searches, including attachments (if you configure that option in Entourage).

One thing that Entourage also offers (as does Outlook on the PC) is the option to "cache" emails which means a mirror of what's on the IMAP server can (optionally) be maintained on the local computer. this enables access to those emails when, say, on an airplane or otherwise when not on the internet.

That said, Entourage is only a shadow of its PC counterpart, Outlook, and much more buggy (and Outlook is buggy in its own right). My company has been working directly with Microsoft on issues with both Entourage and Outlook (we have thousands of government users and apparently that matters enough to Microsoft for them to pay attention to us) and we have gotten some early releases and have been told that big improvements are coming soon for Entourage. We'll see.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by steve626 

One thing that Entourage also offers (as does Outlook on the PC) is the option to "cache" emails which means a mirror of what's on the IMAP server can (optionally) be maintained on the local computer. this enables access to those emails when, say, on an airplane or otherwise when not on the internet.

And so does Apple Mail. For a long time.

(Preferences - Accounts - Advanced)

-t

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by steve626 

Entourage 2008 does have Spotlight searches, including attachments (if you configure that option in Entourage).

One thing that Entourage also offers (as does Outlook on the PC) is the option to "cache" emails which means a mirror of what's on the IMAP server can (optionally) be maintained on the local computer. this enables access to those emails when, say, on an airplane or otherwise when not on the internet.

Not to sound contradictory, but I can't think of a client that *doesn't* offer that feature.

[tooki]

Indeed.

As for Entourage being a "shadow" of Outlook... it was never intended to be Outlook. Entourage is the direct descendant of Outlook Express for Mac, which itself is the spiritual descendant of Claris Emailer (and written by the same people). Bear in mind that OE for Mac had nothing in common with the crappy OE on Windows. Only after MS cancelled Outlook for Mac (yes, it existed once before already) did people begin to look at Entourage as the heir apparent to Outlook.

Whether it's your favorite or not, Entourage is an excellent program, and a good alternative on the platform.

I switched because Entourage is slower than Mail for big IMAP mailboxes, and to try out how integrated Mail is with the Mac in general. (Answer: very, very well.)

turtle: Since Office 2004 with some update, Entourage has been able to sync its contacts and calendars with Address Book and iCal, respectively. There's just a few seconds delay before changes propagate between the two.

jeffk: I don't remember whether Entourage offers unified IMAP mailboxes, but Mail does.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

Ok, just tested my very first ever emails with IMAP.
Very cool, couple quesitons though:

1) With POP, there is just one INBOX and all my 20 emails accuonts receive email in it. With IMAP I see an INBOX created just for the one test email account I made. Am I going to see a long list of 20 inboxes and 20 drafts and 20 sent boxes and 20 spams etc. There a way to unify it all to 1 INBOX?

Probably not with Entourage. You can do this with OS X Mail though, and possibly with a Thunderbird/Postbox extension.

I would suggest rethinking your email situation though. I can't think of a reason to have 20 standalone accounts when you can have multiple identities, email redirects, and rules to help reduce the number of actual standalone email accounts you need. This will make checking your email remotely far easier, and will make your email client perform better in not having to open up 20 connections every x minutes.

2) There seems to be some serious time delays with IMAP. I'm so used to sending test emails and insantly seeing it come in my inbox. I sent test and it was mintues before it came -- especially slow with the laptop over the router/ie wifi.

This may be an Entourage problem, or a simple timing issue if you rely upon your email client automatically checking your mailbox every x minutes.

Besson, thanks, I use a seperate backup software for my files, but with IMAP, isn't the backup issue moot? Also, support, what support, all support is on forums like this basically. Though I think you can call Microsoft for a year or something like that.

It is moot, mostly. Email clients still cache a local copy of all of your email for faster access (and for local searches). You can disable this caching feature if you want though. You're right in your thinking though, the primary storage for your email in an IMAP account is the server, you don't need the local cache.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by tooki 

Indeed.

As for Entourage being a "shadow" of Outlook... it was never intended to be Outlook. Entourage is the direct descendant of Outlook Express for Mac, which itself is the spiritual descendant of Claris Emailer (and written by the same people). Bear in mind that OE for Mac had nothing in common with the crappy OE on Windows. Only after MS cancelled Outlook for Mac (yes, it existed once before already) did people begin to look at Entourage as the heir apparent to Outlook.

Whether it's your favorite or not, Entourage is an excellent program, and a good alternative on the platform.

I switched because Entourage is slower than Mail for big IMAP mailboxes, and to try out how integrated Mail is with the Mac in general. (Answer: very, very well.)

turtle: Since Office 2004 with some update, Entourage has been able to sync its contacts and calendars with Address Book and iCal, respectively. There's just a few seconds delay before changes propagate between the two.

jeffk: I don't remember whether Entourage offers unified IMAP mailboxes, but Mail does.

If a program is slower than Mail for large mailboxes, you have some serious problems because OS X Mail is veerrrryyy slow with large mailboxes.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If a program is slower than Mail for large mailboxes, you have some serious problems because OS X Mail is veerrrryyy slow with large mailboxes.

Which is still an improvement, as it used to completely fail with large mailboxes.

[besson3c]

Speaking of email clients, Postbox is now out of beta and is now at 1.0.

[jeff k]

"One thing that Entourage also offers (as does Outlook on the PC) is the option to "cache" emails which means a mirror of what's on the IMAP server can (optionally) be maintained on the local computer. this enables access to those emails when, say, on an airplane or otherwise when not on the internet."

Steve, I thought with IMAP everything is automatically mirrored on all participating machines.

Tookie, you say mailboxes, do you mean, the email account I will be using? Slower in retrieving email?

What are you guys referring to by large or small mailboxes? thanks!

Cache, local cache. what does this mean? you emails are on server. I don't get it. an extra copyo somewhere? thanks

Beeson, I have 4-5 email accounts spread out with each of the 4-5 websites I own. With POP, it does not take any time to know most of these are not receiving any mail. Is this slower with IMAP?
I couldn't images switching identities every day.

[besson3c]

jeff: it takes time to check for mail in each of those accounts. You need to open a connection, authenticate, check for mail, download any new messages, etc. Why don't you have those email accounts redirect to a consolidate email account? When you compose a message and you have multiple identities setup in a client that supports this you simply select the identity from a menu in the compose window, there's nothing to it.

A cache in this case is just a copy of the messages in your mailbox so that you can view them while you aren't connected to the internet, and so that returning to messages that you've already downloaded is faster than contacting the server and downloading it again.

[jeff k]

Besson,
This cache, I understand the gist of it, but -- if I'm on IMAP, and later in day I look at a old message in the deleted folder or sent folder etc, is that a cache of the message or the message for real, and what difference does it make, is there a difference??

My understanding of Entourage -- Identities -- if you want to see you activity in a different identity, you must go to the menu bar and choose "switch identities"
This is a HUGE hassle. Am I off base/track here?

[besson3c]

I don't know how identities work in Entourage, and they don't even exist in OS X Mail, so maybe they won't help you any.

As for your first question, it depends on whether your email client stores your deleted/sent/trash/drafts/etc. on the server or not. Check to see whether this is an option. If they are appearing under the Inbox mailbox hierarchy, they are on the server (you can verify this by accessing the account from another machine or another client)

Also, note that there is nothing particularly special about your deleted/sent/etc. folders. They are just plain old normal folders that your email client has designated for use for these particular functions. Some clients allow you to configure which folders to use for these functions, but there is no standardization on these names. I've seen "Sent", "sent-mail" and "Sent Messages" used before. It can be a little confusing having these different folders if you juggle between clients, which is why it is a good idea to consolidate on one by configuring all of your email clients to use the folder you want.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If a program is slower than Mail for large mailboxes, you have some serious problems because OS X Mail is veerrrryyy slow with large mailboxes.

Uh, no?

My inbox right now has almost 7500 messages and it works perfectly. Entourage 2004 slowed down immensely with far less. (By the time Entourage 2008 came out, I'd already switched.)

Originally Posted by jeff k 

Besson,
This cache, I understand the gist of it, but -- if I'm on IMAP, and later in day I look at a old message in the deleted folder or sent folder etc, is that a cache of the message or the message for real, and what difference does it make, is there a difference??

My understanding of Entourage -- Identities -- if you want to see you activity in a different identity, you must go to the menu bar and choose "switch identities"
This is a HUGE hassle. Am I off base/track here?

Identities are a holdover from Outlook Express, which was born on versions of Mac OS that didn't support multiple users. An identity is an entire Entourage "setup". The only reason to have more than one is for different people. You do NOT need to set up multiple identities to support multiple email accounts!!!!!!

Originally Posted by jeff k 

Jeff, you are way, way, way over-thinking this whole situation. Everyone else, PLEASE stop overloading Jeff with unnecessary information.

1. Steve, I thought with IMAP everything is automatically mirrored on all participating machines.

2. Tookie, you say mailboxes, do you mean, the email account I will be using? Slower in retrieving email?

3. What are you guys referring to by large or small mailboxes? thanks!

4. Cache, local cache. what does this mean? you emails are on server. I don't get it. an extra copyo somewhere? thanks

5. Beeson, I have 4-5 email accounts spread out with each of the 4-5 websites I own. With POP, it does not take any time to know most of these are not receiving any mail. Is this slower with IMAP?
I couldn't images switching identities every day.

1, 4. IMAP does store it centrally, but every IMAP mail client is smart enough to remember the state the last time it connected, so it only has to download what has changed. The "cache" is this memory, and it speeds things up, but since every IMAP program supports caching and you don't need to think about it, forget that it was ever mentioned.

2. A mailbox is one specific BOX in an email account, for example the inbox, the sent messages box, etc. All email accounts generally have an inbox, an outbox (items waiting to be sent), drafts (messages you are currently writing, or saved to work on later before sending), a sent messages box, and usually a trash ("deleted messages") box as well. Most people create "folders" (extra boxes) to organize with.

3. The more messages in the inbox, the longer it takes to retrieve because the email system has to figure out which messages are new (so you don't download old ones over and over again). If you are diligent about organizing messages, the inbox will never contain too much and it'll never get slow. Slow is relative: my inbox has almost 7500 messages in it (several years' worth) and it still checks email quickly enough for me to never notice a problem.

5. It most certainly does take time to check each email address. It's just happening fast enough that you don't care. IMAP will not be noticeably slower.

That said, if they all end up in one inbox, anyway: just set up each of those addresses to forward to ONE email account, which is the one you set up to access.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by tooki 

Uh, no?

besson is a mail hater. Don't get into an argument about the merits/pitfalls of mail with him. He has more time to kill than you do.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If a program is slower than Mail for large mailboxes, you have some serious problems because OS X Mail is veerrrryyy slow with large mailboxes.

Huh, slow?
Some of my mailboxes contain over 5,000 messages and it takes not more than a blink of an eye for them to load. I don't find it slow at all.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If a program is slower than Mail for large mailboxes, you have some serious problems because OS X Mail is veerrrryyy slow with large mailboxes.

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

Huh, slow?
Some of my mailboxes contain over 5,000 messages and it takes not more than a blink of an eye for them to load. I don't find it slow at all.

I have more than 11,000 messages in my IMAP account on Mail ?

What kind of performance issues should I be having ?
Should I file a bug report if I don't have any problems ?

-t

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by tooki 

Uh, no?

My inbox right now has almost 7500 messages and it works perfectly. Entourage 2004 slowed down immensely with far less. (By the time Entourage 2008 came out, I'd already switched.)

I'm not disagreeing with you that OS X Mail is a step up from Entourage, but it is still crap with large mailboxes (unless this has improved in Snow Leopard). By large mailboxes I mean tens of thousands of messages in several different folders. This sounds eccentric, but many corporations do not delete any mail, but archive it. Being able to access 100,000 messages is not all that uncommon, although a richer IMAP client such as Thunderbird/Postbox has the upper hand in allowing you to archive your mail to another folder and unsubscribe to these folders (OS X Mail doesn't offer this feature, for some strange reason - it is a basic part of the IMAP spec)

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

I have more than 11,000 messages in my IMAP account on Mail ?

What kind of performance issues should I be having ?
Should I file a bug report if I don't have any problems ?

-t

Watch your Activity Monitor. If it is constantly updating folders that have not received new messages, you can consider this evidence of broken behavior. I could probably go back to using Mail again, but in my last job we accessed several shared mailboxes with messages probably totaling well over 100,000 messages. It worked, but Mail was *constantly* spinning its tires to the point where it would lag noticeably. I got tired of wasting CPU cycles doing nothing.

It is also well known that OS X Mail is broken when it comes to accessing IMAP servers in opening more simultaneous connections than it should as per the IMAP RFC. This is why it is/was "banned" by some email providers. This also carries a performance penalty. If you don't believe me, setup your own IMAP server, connect to it, and you'll probably notice 4+ open connections to it from your client when there should only be one. This may have been silently fixed in Snow Leopard though.

I don't hate Mail, I just abandoned it because I literally couldn't use it in my last job. Perhaps I could switch back to it now, although I'm happy in Postbox and would still have to make some concessions. In addition to these aforementioned difficulties OS X Mail lacks multiple identity support, and proper folder subscription support. The MacGPG Mail hack was much weaker than Enigmail too.

[jeff k]

Thanks Tookie Besson other-- thanks great info.
I always immediatly clear out my inbox. to set that issue straight -- but I do keep archive of lots of other stuff - to come back to that later.
New issues:
Today I set up 10 new accounts with one website I have emails tied to. -- worked fine but:
1) THE INBOXES did not indicate they had mail UNTIL you clicked on them. Big issue. Unless solved, I would have to click ten times to see whats up, very annoying. can this be fixed. a why is this?
2) VERIZON. I have 6 email accounts with them. Their website List the IMAP fields:
Verizon | Small Business Support - FiOS Internet: Setting up your Business Email with Outlook Express 5 - 6 on Windows®

Bizarrrley enough they call -- for incoming mail for IMAP: pop.verizonemail.net !!
They put the word pop in that, can you beleive??
Does not matter, does not seem to work. I had assistant test it, we could not get my organic Verizon email (email set up with them) to work for imap. My assistant called VErizon DSL tech support they say they do not support IMAP. Could this be possible??
I did not ask for a supervisor yet... but could one of top ISPs in country not support IMAP??. Wouldn't seems to make sense especially since it says on help page something about "an imap" server. right?
So confused. Hard to proceed until this is solved.

Last issues:

a) On discussion of quantity of emails in boxes. With pop, I usaully "clean" them up every month. Delete from delete box, send box, and do a compress database. Is this all moot with imap? -- Since I'm not hosting the emails on my hardrive?

b) spotlight search -- don't get it. spotlight is for searches of files on hardrive no? we are now on server.
c) nuke email script not working. Important script I use to nuke instatnly junk email so they don't crowd delete folder. why not working? (said "apple event times out"

d)security: if laptop got stolen from hotel, anyone could get/view your emails, right? maybe- over paranoia -- who cares about me right? -- but what would you do?

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

a) On discussion of quantity of emails in boxes. With pop, I usaully "clean" them up every month. Delete from delete box, send box, and do a compress database. Is this all moot with imap? -- Since I'm not hosting the emails on my hardrive?

You aren't EXCLUSIVELY hosting the files on your desktop. Mail/Thunderbird/Entourage will still make copies of those files locally, so you don't have to query the server every time you read a message. You should probably still keep your trash fairly empty, especially if you regularly deal with a lot of email.

b) spotlight search -- don't get it. spotlight is for searches of files on hardrive no? we are now on server.

Same as above. Spotlight will search your local copy of your emails.

c) nuke email script not working. Important script I use to nuke instatnly junk email so they don't crowd delete folder. why not working? (said "apple event times out"

Not sure. But I know that you can set Mail/Entourage to automatically move junk mail to a designated "Junk" folder. It'll keep your trash clean until you're ready to purge it yourself.

d)security: if laptop got stolen from hotel, anyone could get/view your emails, right? maybe- over paranoia -- who cares about me right? -- but what would you do?

Technically, yes. If you're really concerned about people accessing your data after your laptop is stolen, you might want to consider using FileVault.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

Thanks Tookie Besson other-- thanks great info.
I always immediatly clear out my inbox. to set that issue straight -- but I do keep archive of lots of other stuff - to come back to that later.
New issues:
Today I set up 10 new accounts with one website I have emails tied to. -- worked fine but:
1) THE INBOXES did not indicate they had mail UNTIL you clicked on them. Big issue. Unless solved, I would have to click ten times to see whats up, very annoying. can this be fixed. a why is this?

Did you configure the accounts to automatically check for new messages? If so, this is probably an Entourage bug.

2) VERIZON. I have 6 email accounts with them. Their website List the IMAP fields:
Verizon | Small Business Support - FiOS Internet: Setting up your Business Email with Outlook Express 5 - 6 on Windows®

If it were me I'd stop using Verizon's email service *now*, especially since you seem concerned about your security in the event that your laptop is stolen. These instructions are wrong, the server does not respond on the standard IMAP port nor does it list an alternative which strongly suggests that they do not support IMAP at all, but more importantly, neither POP or IMAP options require TLS/SSL to encrypt your password at authentication time. This means that every time your email client checks for new messages it is sending your username/password in the "clear", meaning in unencrypted plain text. This means that it is possible to obtain your username and password in transmission.

I don't know why these sorts of large companies do not take security and good customer service more seriously. I mean, all it takes is one incident like this that can be proven and they have a PR nightmare if this gets out.

Rambling a bit, but I would strongly suggest migrating your email off of Verizon. You can keep them for internet access, but I wouldn't use their email accounts they include.

Bizarrrley enough they call -- for incoming mail for IMAP: pop.verizonemail.net !!
They put the word pop in that, can you beleive??
Does not matter, does not seem to work. I had assistant test it, we could not get my organic Verizon email (email set up with them) to work for imap. My assistant called VErizon DSL tech support they say they do not support IMAP. Could this be possible??

You're right, they don't support IMAP.

a) On discussion of quantity of emails in boxes. With pop, I usaully "clean" them up every month. Delete from delete box, send box, and do a compress database. Is this all moot with imap? -- Since I'm not hosting the emails on my hardrive?

Quantity of emails is absolutely and entirely irrelevant as far as disk space goes. This is a very common misconception. What is important is the disk space that your emails take up. One could have one or two messages that equal thousands of regular messages if these two messages include large attachments.

Cleaning up your email every month is probably a waste of time unless you are running really low on hard disk space (and even then, there are other places I would look first to reclaim space). As far as IMAP servers go, most don't have disk space quotas at all these days, or if they do they are very large. The only advantage to this monthly clean up is to improve the performance of your email client, but as you can tell from your reading, this is usually not a factor until the mailboxes get very very large. If you get a ton of email, I would suggest finding an email client that can handle large mailboxes rather than deleting stuff unless you are absolutely certain that you will never need that message again. From a business standpoint there may be legal or other practical purposes to archive your mail instead of delete it (in the case of the latter, accounting for how many support related emails you get in a period of time and how this trend has grown or slowed down, for instance).

Really, archiving email is where it's at these days with disk space being so cheap. Entourage supports folder subscriptions meaning that you can simply dump all of your old mail you wish to archive into a particular folder and unsubscribe to this folder so that you never have to see this folder again unless you want to. Instructions:

Subscribing and unsubscribe to IMAP folders in Entourage

b) spotlight search -- don't get it. spotlight is for searches of files on hardrive no? we are now on server.

Spotlight will search the cache if your email client supports this. AFAIK only OS X Mail does. I prefer to search within my email program though. I don't want Spotlight wasting time searching through my massive email store (I know you can exclude mail searches, my point is that I personally don't care about this perk). I have a pretty good idea when I'm looking for something when it is in email or on my computer, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

c) nuke email script not working. Important script I use to nuke instatnly junk email so they don't crowd delete folder. why not working? (said "apple event times out"

You can configure many clients to automatically delete and expunge/purge stuff in your deleted/junk folders automatically.

d)security: if laptop got stolen from hotel, anyone could get/view your emails, right? maybe- over paranoia -- who cares about me right? -- but what would you do?

I think you are looking at this the wrong way.

If somebody steals your laptop and you are logged into it, they have access to *everything* on it regardless of whether you are using POP or IMAP. If this is a concern to you, configure OS X to require a password to come out of the screen saver mode (this is called "locking" the screen) when you leave your computer unattended, and enable Filevault so that even if the bad guy transfers all of your files over to their computer they are of no value to them.

In your Keychain Access utility you can enable a menu item that gives you easy access to locking your screen. The configuration for autolocking after you leave your computer for x minutes is in your Energy Saver system pref pane, I believe.

[jeff k]

Besson, -- and Theo
thanks,
I looked all over, did not find
"automatically check for new messages"
Did I miss it?
Still, very weird that my inboxes would not have the bold number of what came in -- but maybe there is something I need to check as you pointed out.

Verizon: so weird, ok I could bail on those emails -- maybe just use them for hobby stuff.
Thankfully one of my two key websits offer tons of free emails and I tested them, and they work great -- except for the afrementioned issue.

I went to my other important website I'm with not sure they support, find out tomorow, will be headache if not as I really like their service a lot.

Security: wow sounds real complex. I 'm not a security nut or anything. Avoided file vault because when it came out it got such bad reviews for being unweildly. Also I don't like to be slowed down when I go to check email. What would be nice, is something easy I could enable for when I travel? I don't think my emails are all that important to the theif, still, worst case, one could just change all the passwords of each email account if the laptop got stolen, correct?

Like the idea of Archiving. I'm doing that a bit with Pop up. making new identities just to archive certain years worth of mail. Yet imap seem to offer greater possibilities - though don't know if it's worth the energy. ie I could archive everything -- non spam -- which I do not do now, and theoretically search for emails years later. Sometimes there is someone I want to reach, but cant search them, as I delete all my deleted emails as a mantaince routine each month. It's rare but does occur. Being that a server has unlimited space I could just archive all non spam emails indefinited. I'm not a company, so it would be just a few thousand normal size emails each year. nice, huh?

The keychaine/ screensaver thing went a bit over my head.

The nuke script is unique: you select just the handful you want and it nukes them -- they don't even go to the delete folder.

[jeff k]

PS, advanced options talks about a deleted items folder and Trash, but I don't see a deleted items folder as I do in POP -- only trash -- so bit confusing what they are trying to ask.

[Big Mac]

Trash is deleted items. They're one and the same. Don't make it more difficult than it has to be - this isn't rocket science (not trying to be disrespectful, just stating a fact).