POP vs IMAP, which is better (and some Outlook 2007 assistance needed as well)?

Hi!

Before you read any further, let me tell you, I've searched on Google and have read the comparisons, but I couldn't understand anything.

Can anyone, in simple language, tell me which format is better, now that GMail is giving both for free? Advantages, disadvantages of both over each other? I'm using POP3.

I have 6 labels in GMail. One of them is from a social networking website, like MySpace/Facebook, and I've set it such that whenever I recieve a message on the website by anyone, an E-Mail comes to my inbox telling me about it, so that I don't have to go on the website every 2 hours to check. Then, I've set this mail to bypass the inbox, and get archived, so that I don't have 20,000,000 "XYZ has sent you a message, click here to login and read it." emails everywhere between my regular mails.

But in Outlook 2007, the same emails comes directly in my inbox, and I have to cut-paste it to a folder that I've manually created, and have to do the same for other labels. Will IMAP help me mirror my web-inbox? If not, then is there a way I can do this in Outlook 2007? I'm really new to this.

Also, sometimes I go to GMail.com to check mails, like when I'm not on my notebook, but when I retrieve my mails on Outlook 2007 later, the "Read" messages come as "Unread". Will IMAP help here?

Thanks you!

 

The main thing IMAP does is sync your web mail with your email client. For example if you mark a email as read in Outlook then it will be marked read in Gmail too. Or if you move a message to the Trash or some folder in Gmail it will be there in Outlook as well. So IMAP is generally considered better than POP3.

Yes to the last question, IMAP will help.

 

Generally,

POP3 = download to client
IMAP = sync w/ client, and vice versa

Regards,
Paolo