RE: Email client programs

["Ben Yau" <byau@cardcommerce.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nate Duehr [mailto:nate@natetech.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 8:00 AM
> To: Curtis Vaughan
> Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Email client programs
>
> >
> Neither POP3 nor IMAP nor anything else will fix a problem at the
> network level.  This seems obvious.  Either the network works well, or
> it doesn't.  Applications at layer 7 of the OSI model suffer when the
> lower layers don't operate correctly.
>

True, but you can do your best to workaround the network issue.  In this
case, a mail client that would actually do something akin to

retr 1
del 1
retr 2
del 2
retr 3
del 3

Instead of retrieving all messages _and then_ deleting which is what outlook
express seemes to do .  I don't know of a mail client that will delete as it
downloads.

However, here's something which may work.  Configure your MS OE to "Leave a
copy of messages on server" (this is in the Tools->Accounts->Advanced).
This way, it won't delete.  What happens is when you download messages,
outlook remembers (I don't know how )the last message you downladed so when
you go back to download more messages, it won't download anything it has
already downloaded.

Then you configure the "Delete messages on server after [blank] days" or
"Delete messages when moved to Deleted" and that is how to clean the
messages off the server.

I have never played with this, don't know if it will work, but it's worth a
shot.  This may work in your case depending on when MS OE marks the message
as being downloaded.  If it marks each message as it downloads, you're in
good shape.  If it only marks all the messages after downloading all the
messages, then you're back to square one.

Good luck with that.

Ben Yau