Are IMAP Clients basically useless?
osaddict
London, UK
We currently have a hosted email service from a decent mailhost (rackspace basically). Our accounts are setup as IMAP accounts - for the synch benefits mainly, and the backup.
Using the webmail for these accounts is fine, however, Outlook just totally misbehaves - the connection to the server goes offline frequently, switching between emails takes ages and Outlook often freezes entirely.
This happens on a number of different PCs - with different OS (XP Home, XP Pro, Vista Business). On the PCs in question I have tried (outside of Outlook)
Both have made no difference.
I researched IMAP and clients in Google- it seems many people complain about Outlook 2007s (what we have) suppport for IMAP, many cite that Thunderbird is better but still very poor.
We have tried virtually every combination of settings you can imagine in Outlook, all have been unsuccessful in producing a satisfactory outcome.
Does anyone have much experience with IMAP - and do they have much success using it in Office 2007?
For the record we have around 40 people using IMAP.
Using the webmail for these accounts is fine, however, Outlook just totally misbehaves - the connection to the server goes offline frequently, switching between emails takes ages and Outlook often freezes entirely.
This happens on a number of different PCs - with different OS (XP Home, XP Pro, Vista Business). On the PCs in question I have tried (outside of Outlook)
- Disabling any form of firewall or anti-virus (we are behind ISA server anyhow)
- Connecting specific machines to the Internet bypassing our server - i.e Internet - PC
Both have made no difference.
I researched IMAP and clients in Google- it seems many people complain about Outlook 2007s (what we have) suppport for IMAP, many cite that Thunderbird is better but still very poor.
We have tried virtually every combination of settings you can imagine in Outlook, all have been unsuccessful in producing a satisfactory outcome.
Does anyone have much experience with IMAP - and do they have much success using it in Office 2007?
For the record we have around 40 people using IMAP.
0
Comments
Generally everytime I've seen an issue with imap acting up it's because of a slow connection. Firewall's if configured properly shouldn't cause any issues at all. An incorectly configured firewall would prevent the connection entirely it shouldn't cause intermittent issues.
Generally most places have a default policy that imap will keep the connection online as long as the user is doing something with the account. When that user goes inactive for a period of time could be a minute could be 15mins it drops the connections. This shouldn't be a big deal since the point of imap is to have a local mirror of what's on the server. Then when you go to send/receive it should open the connection backup and do a resync. It's at that point where you'll typically experience slowness and odd issues.
Generally speaking imap works well for more typical home use. If you open your email program do what you need then close it again it's usually pretty good. Where imap causes grief is for the type of user that leaves their outlook open all day long. Which is pretty typical for most work users. However in that case remote connecting to a mail provider outside of the domain can often be a headache for the reasons I mentioned above.