[SLUG] In Search of the Optimal Mail Setup

[Chuck Dale <bug@nospam.aphid.net>]

Dear Sluggers,

I have been a heavy email user for a few years now but have never made the
effort to find a good email client. I am now embarking on the search to find the
best email setup I can and so am asking your help.

Change is not easy and I have tried a few times but not successfully. I used
Netscape Mail for about a year and a half on an NT box then NS Mail on my Linux
box for another year or so. Then I started using IMP, a web based IMAP client,
which is quite good. This gives me the ability to use my email where shell
access isn't possible like around uni and at work. The only problem with IMP is
that it is quite slow to use at home.

I want to combine the freedom of being able to use a web based interface to my
mail when I'm away from home but also have a very fast and usable client at
home. Currently I am trying Mutt on my Linux box at home with fetchmail grabbing
mail from my server, but I cannot think of an easy way to maintain a copy of
that email on my server so I can use IMP for web based mail away from home.

The problem is not that of having the mail in two places at once - that would be
easy enough if I used a fetchmail to grab the mail but left it on the server.
The problem is that I want to have the folders synchronised between my two mail
clients. So, for example, if I fetchmail my mail at home, filtering it with
procmail, I want the same filtered mail to be available on the server to IMAP.
Similarly (although it would be harder to implement both of these) if I move a 
message between folders on the server I would like this to be reflected on my 
home box.

One suggestion I had was to synchronise my local folders using rsync with the
folders on the server every so often, but the problem with this is that IMAP
puts a marker message at the top of every folder which my Mutt mailboxes would
not have. Would this be a problem?

IMAP is almost good for me but the problem is that I want instantaneous mail at
home.. This is essentially server side email but with two servers.

Sorry for being so verbose but it's difficult to fully explain my situation.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Or just describing how you have your
mail setup/access it away from home.

TIA,
Chuck
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux Users Group Mailing List - http://www.slug.org.au
To unsubscribe send email to slug-request@nospam.slug.org.au with
unsubscribe in the text