On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:53:50 -0500 Jeffery Rehm said something about [IMail Forum] IMAP Speed:
> Here is something I can't quite figure out. I'm using IMAP for my > account and when I check new messages it takes quite a while to download > the bodies, even if there are only a few new messages. However, if I > select the Sent Items or any other folders I've setup the bodies show up > fairly quickly. > > Jeffery Rehm > That's because MS IMAP products (and 99% of other Windows based IMAP clients) have the annoying habit of downlaoding EVERYTHING and saving it to a local set of "temp" folders. When you just "open" a folder without telling the system to check for new mail it just opens the locally cached copies of what it has already downloaded. It treats IMAP like it's a da** POP account. I, personally, archive a LOT of my email -- and I like to have acces to it (online, not directly). So, I set up a mail server at home using IMAP. Worked great with all the linux clients I tried. Then I started trying to use IMAP on the Winboxen I have because the nature of my job dictates that I am in front of them more than linux machines. Every time I tried to open a folder with more than 300 or 400 messages the client would 'hang'. Tried Outlook and OE because they were on every machine I had. I finally figured out they were hanging because they were trying to download every message in the folder and save them to a local cache -- I have folders that regularly reach 3000 - 5000 messages before I move old stuff to an archive folder. I have probably 5 or 6 GIG of archived email on my home server. I set up squirrelmail on the home server so I'd have "clean" IMAP (web based) access when I wasn't near one of my linux boxes. And I started looking. What I ended up with for IMAP on a windows machine is actually something I used for a while under linux. It's called Mahogany. http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/ It works properly. It leaves the messages on the server where they're supposed to be -- it lets the SERVER do the sorting and threading -- it only grabs a handful of headers around the message you are currently reading, not every header in the folder. If you need to go back to an old message in the folder just scroll up in the header list with the scroll bar and it grabs a handful of headers around the point where you stop. It doesn't download a message body until you choose to view the message -- and you can set a config option that if a message is over a certain size it asks if you REALLY want to download it. It allows multiple accounts. Each FOLDER can have it's own settings. I use a different email address for each list I'm on. When I'm sitting in the IMail folder and I click "compose" it pops up with the "To:" already filled in with the list address. Every account I have set up also uses a different SMTP Auth name/pass at the server end so I can track them in my server logs and know if one has been compromised (plus I use the SMTP Auth to set the sender address to match the "From" address) -- No problem in Mahogany -- each folder has all the options of a full mail account available in it's properties dialog. And Mahogany can save most of it's settings to a folder on the IMAP server. -- Install Mahogany on a new machine, set up a basic connection that let's you see the folders, tell Mahogany to retrieve the settings, and Voila -- your new install now looks like the install on the original machine -- same folder settings and all. It does have its shortcomings. If you want your folders sorted in a particular order you're going to have to go digging around in the registry to add some keys that it knows about, but doesn't have an option for yet. Uninstalling can be hairy, including having to clean the registry entries out by hand. The properties interface is sometimes confusing. It's a linux port and the linux version has a text config file -- I wish they'd stuck with that in the port. Yes, I like IMAP. And Yes, I like Mahogany. And yes, this got long -- Sorry. Short answer, it's a shortcoming of the IMAP client you are using. G -- Gerald V. Livingston II Configure your Email to send TEXT ONLY -- See the following page: http://expita.com/nomime.html To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
