Hi,
I want to use the same email accounts on both my laptop and desktop PC, and I need to keep them synchronized so I always (more or less) have all received and sent emails, on both machines.
Can anyone recommend a specific method or piece of software to assist in this?
(I don't want to use a IMAP account)
I use this method for recieved emails :
http://helpdesk.graniteschools.org/docs/Document.asp?ID=226I then sync everything else when I'm on the home network using GoodSync :
http://www.goodsync.com/ The simplest way would be that you either only use IMAP, which does not download it or have an additional "important" mailbox where you reupload those mails downloaded that you think are important enough to be kept ...
Thats what I do. Got sick of the bi daily sync ...
IMAP or an MS Exchange server are pretty much the only way that's going to happen.
One of the big problems is that *normally* your sent mail is not stored on the mail server, POP3 is a download-only protocol. You can tweak your mail client settings to not delete messages from the server for -x- days, or not delete them until after they are also deleted in the mail client software (so they'd be available for your second computer to download as well), but that would still not do anything for your outgoing email. It also wouldn't remember the message status (read/unread).
If space is an issue: google has been rolling out imap to their gmail accounts, and they will allow several GB of messages to be stored on their system.
Can't you just use webmail? then it will be the same whereever you log onto?
Webmail or collaboration servers like Exchange and Domino with their native protocols are probably your only option to properly "synchronize". Actually, you wouldn't be synchronizing at all, you'd just use -one- interface and application all the time.
The problem with the collaboration servers is that they only work properly either through Terminal Server clients or their web interfaces when you are not connected to their LAN and domain.
Unless you want to setup an own Terminal Server and/or collab/mail server, that reduces your options to a web interface.
With local clients, IMAP is your only option. On Windows, use Ritlabs The Bat! as your client for it. It has one major difference to all other clients: It actually downloads the mails to your local machine. This usually is seen as a design flaw in the IMAP implementation, but actually it is exactly what you want, since you want a synchronized local copy of the mails. Besides that, The Bat! still is by far the best email program that I've ever used and it is the only Windows application that I really, really miss on the Mac. It's not cheap, though, but worth every single penny. It's Shareware, so you can try it for 30 days and find out if you like it.
Thanks guys! I think I'll try the IMAP route, and see how that works out for me :)