At first this article was going to teach you how to setup your email account using Apple's "Mail" program. It is a great program. I have it open all day long and I always suggest that people use it over any web interface that their email account may offer. However, the article kept going off on tangents because it became a more complex issue than I had originally thought it was. But email can be tricky! So, if you know your email address, your incoming mail server and your password, you can skip the rest of this article and go right on to "Setting up email in Apple's Mail."
KINDS OF EMAIL
POP: This is a very common email that is offered by most email services. Optimum Online offers POP accounts. What is significant about POP is that when you connect to an email server using POP, your computer downloads all of the email to your computer and then deletes it from the server. This can be configured so that mail stays on the server for a week or a month but often, POPing your email will result in mail being deleted after it has been downloaded to your computer. The good thing about this is that your mailbox will never become full. Automatically, your messages are deleted from the server so that you always have room for newer messages. This does NOT affect the email that has been downloaded to your computer. So not only do you have complete access to all of your email from your own computer, but your email is available to you even without an internet connection because your mail is being accessed locally since it has been downloaded to your computer. This scenario was ideal 10-15 years ago when everyone's internet connection was a slow dial-up connection. It was rather annoying having to sign-on to the internet just to read old email.
IMAP: IMAP is simply a different protocol and it works differently. With a typical IMAP account, you don't download ANY of your email but rather, you just peak into the server holding your email. You can still make folders to organize your email but these folders are actually on the server and not your computer. So if you don't have an internet connect, you will not be able to see any of your old email. However, IMAP now has an option to download a copy to your computer so that it has similar functionality as POP. But a huge advantage to an IMAP account is that since the email resides on the server, multiple devices can check the account and remain in sync. This was not a concern 15 years ago but now people have a work computer, a home computer, a laptop and an iPhone. Keeping things is sync has become a priority. So if you read an email from your iPhone, by the time you get home and check email from your laptop, that same message will appear as read. Whereas, a POP account would have viewed it as new mail since this laptop hadn't yet downloaded the email.
So interestingly, POP has added the feature to leave email on the server while IMAP added the feature to download mail to your computer. The significant difference between the two is that with IMAP, your account will remain in sync throughout all of your devices. POP will not.
MobileMe: This service is offered by Apple and is actually much more than just email. Suffice it to say for the purpose of this article that the MobileMe account is extremely easy to setup and use. It too remains in sync amongst all of your devices.
Exchange: This is a proprietary Microsoft email technology. It is extremely robust and very powerful. It is used exclusively in corporate environments. You'll never see it used in a home. However, you would probably want to check your corporate email from your home. Apple's Mail will allow you to do this (with some extra configuration). But the new Snow Leopard Mail connects almost seamlessly with Exchange servers if they are on the same network.
Domino: IBM also has it's own proprietary email system. It is very much like Microsoft Exchange in that it offers email, calendars and contacts.
WebMail: Many services allow you to access their email service through a webpage. Often, this is the only way people know how to access their email. However, this is usually not nearly as convenient, fast or efficient. What is nice about it though is that you can always check your email from a computer that has simple web access. In this case, the email client would be the web client!
CLIENTS:
Apple's Mail: The email client that comes built into the Mac OS is called Mail. It happens to be my favorite. I recommend it to anyone using a Mac, especially if they're using Time Machine. There is an important difference in the way Mail stores email. Rather than keep all email within a single database file, each message is its own file. So incremental backups are far more efficient than the way all other email programs handle email in regard to backups. Apple Mail is also linked to the Address Book and iCal so that all three used in conjunction with one another equals its rivals. This can be a good thing because it keeps each application lightweight and you can use one without having to have the others open.
Entourage: This is Microsoft's email client for the Macintosh. It comes the Microsoft Office. It is a very good email program too. It also has its own calendar and contacts programs built-in. This was specifically designed to connect to an Exchange server so many corporate environments will only support Entourage.
Thunderbird: Brought to you by the makers of Firefox, Thunderbird is Mozilla's email client.
Outlook: Available only on the PC, it is the full featured email client that comes with Microsoft Office
Outlook Express: This is Microsoft's free email client that comes with Windows. This was available to the Mac back in the OS 9 days.
Lotus Notes: This email client is very robust and is built entirely in Java which means that it is OS independent. It was built exclusively for connecting to a Domino server (also found only in large corporations or schools)
Rumors have it that Outlook will make its way to the Macintosh in the next release.
There are other email clients out there but those are the major players. In the next article, I'll explain how to setup Apple's Mail to send and receive email.