POP: Allows you to access your email from a single computer
IMAP: Allows you to access to your email from several different computers

POP: Allows access to new email stored in your INBOX folder only
IMAP: Allows access to email stored in all folders

POP: Incoming email is not stored on MARCUS after it is transferred down to your computer
IMAP: Allows email to be stored in folders on MARCUS

POP: Fetches the entire contents of each new incoming email message
IMAP: Only fetches the headers of each new incoming email message

One of the main disadvantages with using a POP email client is that email is transferred down to your client computer and then deleted from MARCUS. This means that the only copy of these email messages is stored on the client computer. If something happens to these messages, and you do not have a backup, then those email messages are lost. With the IMAP protocol, messages can be stored on MARCUS, and can be downloaded from MARCUS a second time.

Since IMAP allows you to store email messages on MARCUS, this means you can access your email from several different computers and still keep all of your email together in one place. If you check your email both at Whitman and at home, IMAP is a better solution that POP.

Since IMAP initially fetches only the email headers and not the entire message, access to your email is much faster. This is especially true if you receive an email message with a large attachment; using POP, you would have to wait until the entire message was downloaded to your computer before you could access it.

A list of email clients that support IMAP is available IMAP home page at www.imap.org/products.html. To read more about the differences between POP and IMAP, check out www.whitman.edu/docs/pop.vs.imap.html.