> The POP3 protocol still works. You can still get Mozilla Thunderbird and grab POP3-style emails from GMail or whatever. But people want IMAP instead, an alway

> The POP3 protocol still works. You can still get Mozilla Thunderbird and grab POP3-style emails from GMail or whatever. But people want IMAP instead, an always-connected model provides better idea of which emails were "read" or "not read", for example. Well, IMAP isn't always-online, it supports it but you can just as easily use it, download the messages, and disconnect. With IMAP you do get push notifications for email instead of polling, though, which is nice.