Why The Heck Are People Still Using POP3?

[nooby]

ukgangster, may I guess you have one of the pay for FM accounts for it is too easy to get out of bandwith in FM if one use IMAP instead of the webmail interface which I do at/on/in my Guest account?

I am all for that people who knows what they do use imap but for us who fail to grasp the bad effects of moving a folder it is better to use pop3 or webmail

[ukgangster]

Originally Posted by nooby

ukgangster, may I guess you have one of the pay for FM accounts for it is too easy to get out of bandwith in FM if one use IMAP instead of the webmail interface which I do at/on/in my Guest account?

I am all for that people who knows what they do use imap but for us who fail to grasp the bad effects of moving a folder it is better to use pop3 or webmail

I have an enhanced account as I use 4 of my domains with Fastmail. As for bandwith, I get maybe 30-40 emails a week, with probably 5 or 6 spam also in a week, and the last time I looked, I had used 0% 6.0M/13800M, so theres no danger that I would exceed any bandwiths, so it doesn't bother me.

You are right, as we say in the UK "Horses for Courses" meaning only put the horse on the right course, so in email terms, if your happy with IMAP, go with it, if POP works perfect for you, theres no reason to change. The choice is there

[chrisretusn]

Originally Posted by ReuvenNY

chrisretusn, it seems that you have your POP system working well for you. But reading your extensive comments, I noticed that you basically emulate in your setup what IMAP does naturally.

Yes, you are right. There are a lot of similarities. You could say that POP3 does this naturally too. In fact I have been managing my messages this way since I started using e-mail, well before IMAP came around. I don't agree that IMAP does this naturally. I would still have to set up one of my IMAP accounts to be the "main" account, recreate my folder structure and filters on the server and then workout getting messages from all of my accounts in to the "main" account.

The one thing I didn't get reading your posting is: in which way would IMAP not be good for you? What would the disadvantages be?

Well... Lets see... Let me try to answer.

I guess the immediate answer is I have zero messages stored on any server (excluding new messages in account Inboxes). That could be changed of course, but I prefer not to store messages on any given server. I delete them after downloading.

With my client I have four levels of filters Incoming, Outgoing, Pre-Download, Post Send and 4 manual filter sets. I can also add scripts to run based on a filter condition. I can also run filters and scripts based on events. I don't think there are any IMAP servers that allow for this sort flexibility.

The biggest disadvantage for me with be having to setup to use IMAP, and for what reason. I do not save my messages on the sever. Even if I switched over to using IMAP protocol, I would still to it the POP3 way.

[ReuvenNY]

chrisretusn, all the filters and other settings are on your client, not server. So servers have nothing to do with how you set your rules on your machine. This is true regardless of the type of protocol you have - IMAP or POP. You can however, set rules on the server. The results of those rules will be reflected in the folders you view in your client. I never do any setups using Thunderbird with my IMAP accounts. So I am not sure I understand what setups you are referring. One last point - I am a believer that you don't fix things that are working for you. If POP is good - great. I am not trying to change your's or anybody's opinion. For me it's just an session in learning of how and why people handle their email the way they do.

[ReuvenNY]

Originally Posted by nooby

...I am not clever enough and my ADHD or ADD or my lack of being logical and patient ended up in me abandoning anything IMAP. IMAP is for the clever people not for average people like me.

I think you are too harsh on yourself. I don't personally know you, but you come across as one of the nicest people on the forum and smart too. Even though your English is not your mother tongue, and sometimes I have to carefully reread your comments, you always have something meaningful to say. So cheer up, take a deep breath and start learning IMAP again!

[xmailer]

Originally Posted by ReuvenNY

So cheer up, take a deep breath and start learning IMAP again!

I agree with ReuvenNY, nooby. Especially since he's been so kind as to offer to pay the $25 restoration fee for you if you lose another folder in your Fastmail account.

[FMRocks]

Originally Posted by David

Most folk here will never accept the fact that POP is best for the majority of the people, and cannot explain why (after 25 years) IMAP has failed to fire up the imagination of the regular email user.

I can explain why. Two reasons: first, inertia. POP3 was the first default email standard. Even before the advent of good web mail. POP3 is how people got their emails when email first came into the consumer market. People generally are afraid of new things even if those things would, in the end, make their lives better. This is the reason you still see AIM being the dominant Instant messaging client, and people not using multi-network IM clients. This is why most people still use Internet Explorer despite having other superior browsers available to them free of charge.

Second, it is not true that POP is better for the majority of the people. The fact that more people use POP3 than use IMAP is not evidence of the fact that POP is "better" for the majority of the people. Heck, it isn't even evidence that POP3 is *used by* a majority of email users. I suspect that these days, most people (i.e. more than 50%) either use Web mail or none of the protocols (IMAP, POP3, Webmail) has a majority of the market.

Originally Posted by freemailguy

People use POP3 because it works, and it is easy. Download your mail and read it. SHOCKING!

Heh. And what happens if your email client suddenly hits a wall and craps out in the middle of downloading your email, deleting the local emails that have just been downloaded (and thus just deleted from your server)? Evidently, for you:

All of my mail is backed up on GMAIL. I can log on to GMAIL anywhere and check all of my mail at any time.

But not everyone does this. It also begs the question that if all of your email is already in one account, why not just check it on Gmail's website rather than downloading to a local client at all?

[nooby]

Thanks,

But it sure was my own fault and had nothing to do with FM.

And they treated me real friendly too helping me end an account and allowed me to create a new one with better username. So kudos to FM for caring about careless me.

I keep the account for nostalgic reasons and log in via webmail to keep it going.

Some weeks ago when I started up a new Vista computer it set my gmail to IMAP despite me trying to tell it not to. But after much trial and error I managed to set it to POP3 instead.

No I don't sell me short. I write too often. The ADHD impulses makes me act without enough consideration but sometimes it maybe helps somebody to look at the problem from many different angles. But sometimes my posts are too confusing or outright missing the context even. Embarrassing.

I have tried to slow down on posting though. So hopefully it will get better.

[xmailer]

Originally Posted by FMRocks

I can explain why. Two reasons: first, inertia. POP3 was the first default email standard. Even before the advent of good web mail. POP3 is how people got their emails when email first came into the consumer market. People generally are afraid of new things even if those things would, in the end, make their lives better. This is the reason you still see AIM being the dominant Instant messaging client, and people not using multi-network IM clients. This is why most people still use Internet Explorer despite having other superior browsers available to them free of charge.

It could be simple "inertia", but short of substantiation of that belief, it could also be just that POP3 is quite good enough for those who use it, so they simply have no reason to consider another alternative. I think for the majority of people the attitude toward most things is simply that if something works, they use it. Only those somewhat obsessed with trying new things bother looking for something else when what they have works fine for them. And that seems immanently logical to me.

By analogy, I'm personally somewhat obsessed with trying every new free email service I learn of, and sometimes I discover "better" ones in so doing. However, most people may be perfectly satisfied with Yahoo or Hotmail or whatever they may feel works adequately for them, and I don't expect them to be as obsessed as some of us may be with finding "the best" when they already have "perfectly good enough" for their own purpose. I guess you can call that "inertia", but if so, it seems a very logical and reasonable "inertia" to me.

Second, it is not true that POP is better for the majority of the people. The fact that more people use POP3 than use IMAP is not evidence of the fact that POP is "better" for the majority of the people. Heck, it isn't even evidence that POP3 is *used by* a majority of email users. I suspect that these days, most people (i.e. more than 50%) either use Web mail or none of the protocols (IMAP, POP3, Webmail) has a majority of the market.

If they're happy with what they're using, then it seems clear that, whether or not someone else may judge it as "better", it's perfectly "good enough" for them.

Heh. And what happens if your email client suddenly hits a wall and craps out in the middle of downloading your email, deleting the local emails that have just been downloaded (and thus just deleted from your server)? Evidently, for you:


But not everyone does this. It also begs the question that if all of your email is already in one account, why not just check it on Gmail's website rather than downloading to a local client at all?

I can't answer this for him, of course, but obviously having it both places means that it's backed up. So, of course, if his email client "craps out", if he wants to he can later redownload them from Gmail. But I assume that if his email client "craps out" he may lose any and all local copies of messages he's downloaded through either protocol, So this might seem a moot point to the original question. If it's backed up either way, then it doesn't seem to me that there's much difference except in the details.

[FMRocks]

Originally Posted by xmailer

It could be simple "inertia", but short of substantiation of that belief, it could also be just that POP3 is quite good enough for those who use it, so they simply have no reason to consider another alternative. I think for the majority of people the attitude toward most things is simply that if something works, they use it. Only those somewhat obsessed with trying new things bother looking for something else when what they have works fine for them. And that seems immanently logical to me.

This is true. However, it is also true that when people do try new things, they end up adapting it. If people were satisfied from the beginning of time with what they had and "worked for them" at the time, and didn't look into new things, much of the innovation and advancement of the modern day may not be here. After all, back in the day, a horse-drawn carriage worked for a lot of people. Why get cars? CD's "worked" for a lot of people. Why look into buying MP3's?

Again, I think a change has happened in the email market as far as how people get their email. But it wasn't from POP3 to IMAP, I concede. It has been, in my judgment, from email clients to web mail.

If they're happy with what they're using, then it seems clear that, whether or not someone else may judge it as "better", it's perfectly "good enough" for them.

I was not making a point about something being better. Rather, I was challenging the statement that "most" people use POP3. Most, mathematically, denotes a majority, that is, a number greater than 50% (of all email users, in this case). That is not something that has been substantiated. I agree that more people use POP3 than use IMAP, but that does not make POP3 have a majority of the email user market, since those two are not the only options on how one gets one's email.

[xmailer]

Originally Posted by FMRocks

This is true. However, it is also true that when people do try new things, they end up adapting it. If people were satisfied from the beginning of time with what they had and "worked for them" at the time, and didn't look into new things, much of the innovation and advancement of the modern day may not be here. After all, back in the day, a horse-drawn carriage worked for a lot of people. Why get cars? CD's "worked" for a lot of people. Why look into buying MP3's?

Why indeed? But what are MP3's and what are they good for?

In fact, I think I probably still have many more cassettes than CD's. And both still work fine for me, and I only occasionally play MP3's on the computer when that may happen to be the only format I happen to have certain music in. (Although this may not be the best analogy for me, since I don't listen to music particularly frequently anyway. I've actually never even had software on my current 7-year-old computer capable of playing standard music CD's, but just use a portable cassette/CD player for those.)

Again, I think a change has happened in the email market as far as how people get their email. But it wasn't from POP3 to IMAP, I concede. It has been, in my judgment, from email clients to web mail.


I was not making a point about something being better. Rather, I was challenging the statement that "most" people use POP3. Most, mathematically, denotes a majority, that is, a number greater than 50% (of all email users, in this case). That is not something that has been substantiated. I agree that more people use POP3 than use IMAP, but that does not make POP3 have a majority of the email user market, since those two are not the only options on how one gets one's email.

Perhaps he meant that most people who use a "local" email client still use POP3? Which, without any statistics offhand, I'd tend to think likely. But I'd also agree that there may be more webmail-only users by now, which as I've said more than once, to me personally is preferable to either POP3 or IMAP. So perhaps as good a question would be, why the heck are some people still using those archaic POP3 and IMAP protocols?

(To answer my own question with the same answer I gave to the original one, I believe it's, simply enough, because people's needs and preferences vary.)

[ReuvenNY]

Originally Posted by FMRocks

... Again, I think a change has happened in the email market as far as how people get their email. But it wasn't from POP3 to IMAP, I concede. It has been, in my judgment, from email clients to web mail...

I tend to agree with the direction of the change; for most people it makes sense - they do not need to install and configure anything and can use it from any computer right away.

When it comes to "power" users, it's different. Many have multiple email accounts and do not want to have to log into each separately or "POP" from external accounts.
Furthermore, IMAP email client affords many options not available otherwise, like dragging messages from one account to another.

[xmailer]

Originally Posted by ReuvenNY

I tend to agree with the direction of the change; for most people it makes sense - they do not need to install and configure anything and can use it from any computer right away.

Which makes it much more "modern", IMO.

When it comes to "power" users, it's different. Many have multiple email accounts and do not want to have to log into each separately or "POP" from external accounts.

I don't even have a good estimate of how many email accounts I have offhand, but using only the web, it's easy enough to, one way or another, migrate any messages from one account to another if I ever need to. But I don't need to actually check multiple accounts on a regular or frequent basis, since I only need to make sure that all messages I may need to see on a "timely" basis find their way to the one account I check regularly -- again, without ever needing to use a local client, which would be an unnecessary time-wasting "middle man" to me.

Furthermore, IMAP email client affords many options not available otherwise, like dragging messages from one account to another.

I suspect the overwhelming majority of email users would ask what in the world they'd ever need to do that for. And they'd be right. (I've known people who have used nothing but a single yahoo webmail account for years and they've never seemed to want or need anything more.

But I agree, "power" users -- or those I might call "geeks" -- may well believe that they need more, because they probably take email more seriously than the "average" person would ever need or want to. At least I believe that, for most people I know personally, email is a relatively minor "issue" in their lives and they'd probably be baffled as to why anyone would ever bother visiting a forum such as this one, or waste time discussing a subject of such grave importance as POP3 versus IMAP. .

[xmailer]

Perhaps to summarize, I could change the original question to "Why would anyone go looking for a new email protocol when what they've been using for years still works as well as ever, and has therefore 'withstood the test of time'?"

[Sherry]

Originally Posted by xmailer

Perhaps to summarize, I could change the original question to "Why would anyone go looking for a new email protocol when what they've been using for years still works as well as ever, and has therefore 'withstood the test of time'?"

I guess I'll post again with a possible answer to that.

I think the main reason is the same reason most people don't use much more than 10% of any program they use. It might be because they don't know there is more to it! If it does what they "expect" it to do then they are happy (not knowing what they are missing out on). Many who use POP3 don't even check their email at work during lunch time because they don't know or expect it can be done. Same when they are on vacations. So the only way for them to "know" if they are using the best of POP3 or IMAP would mean they need to learn what can be done and if they need/want any extras besides sending/receiving emails with attachments on their home computers... (but then if you don't realize something can even be done you wouldn't even think to ask how to do something )

Sherry