I think, therefore IMAP.

No, people, I did not misspell the iMac by Apple Computers. I am referring instead to a way of handling e-mail.

IMAP stands for Internet Mail Access Protocol. By using it, people can take advantage of useful features for dealing with e-mail that are not available when using the prevalent Unix e-mail client, Pine, or a POP mail client like Eudora.

To understand how IMAP works, it is useful to compare it to the other major e-mail access protocol known as POP, Post Office Protocol.

All users with an fas account have their e-mail inboxes and folders stored on the server in their home directories. For most, their e-mail saga starts with Pine. This is the program officially recommended by Harvard's computer services staff.

Although very powerful, for many people, Pine quickly becomes a nuisance.

With its ugly green color and keyboard-only interface, users are reminded of the dog days of DOS.

People who want the graphical interface they've grown accustomed to in applications such as word processors choose, as an alternative, to use a POP e-mail client such as Eudora.

With POP, e-mail is downloaded from the server onto your actual computer.

This proved useful in the days of expensive dial-up Internet connections because people could connect to a service provider for a few minutes, down-load hundreds of messages and read them without keeping their eyes on the clock.

But there are problems with POP, especially in a mobile environment such as a college campus. POP can work for those who primarily use one computer to do e-mail. But for people who need to access their messages everywhere all the time, POP is not good enough.

With all your mail downloaded to the local computer, your inbox shows up empty if you check it from anywhere else. In order to access downloaded messages, you can choose the option that allows you to leave your mail on the server.

However, the problem with this option is that it creates a burden on the servers. And because there is no synchronization between server messages and local messages, you can end up with heavy duplication.

Enter IMAP. This protocol was developed to make up for many of POP's shortcomings.

Rather than simply downloading all messages from the server, IMAP can download header information only, limited amounts of messages or the whole thing.