Winer's Continuing Mail Woes

Dave says:

Mail meltdown, again. 600 messages waiting this morning. My DSL line hasn't been doing well the last 24 hours, and that means mail gets even more unreliable, and overnight it overloaded again, even though I have Eudora checking every five minutes. So if you sent me an email overnight, there's a pretty good chance I won't see it. Same for the rest of today. Not sure what I can do, but it sure makes planning a trip to Calif pretty hard without reliable email.

Dave: Try IMAP. Its a godsend. I get up to 1000 messages per day and I've never been happier with the performance of my mailbox. Trick is, you'll have to find a decent IMAP reader. Thunderbird is the best one available for Windows or simply use Pine if you want to go retro. Once you get settled in, start working everything over to the server side (all your folders and archives etc.). You can easily move mail from your local box onto the server by simply dragging folders from your local host and dropping them onto the remote drive (assuming you're using a graphic client). Going from there, a whole world of efficiencies await you. Server side filter that deals with your mail even when your client *isn't* running? Imagine how satisfying it would be to sit down at your mail and have it all pre-filed in your folders waiting for you to read.
Email isn't busted, but POP most certainly does suck. Don't give up yet. You still have options.