Matilda Internet FAQ

POP3 is a mail protocol whereas you authenticate to the mail server, once authenticated your email client e.g. Outlook Express will download all the messages from the server onto your laptop, store them locally then delete the messages from the server once they have download to your pc. This can be a timely process especially if you have large emails in your inbox, if you cancel or your connection drops out the process will have to start again from scratch.

POP3 is good when used on fast internet connections, smaller emails and when there is only one pc accessing the same email address.

IMAP is another mail protocol, once authenticated the mail client will download a list of mail headers from the server and store these only on your pc, not the email itself. At all times the email remains on the remote mail server, when you click on a particular email the full message is then downloaded. When you delete a message it then deletes the message from the server and puts it in a remote trash can. This can be useful when you have a slower internet connection and get a lot of large emails, you can delete messages before the need of downloading the whole thing to your pc, also more than one pc can share the same mailbox.