Gmail through Thunderbird with IMAP

If you have multiple e-mail accounts and are tired of having to log into each one individually through a web interface, then what would you say if you could get all of your e-mail in one place? I have several Gmail accounts and some e-mail accounts with trentwusc.org, all of which I need to check often. Unfortunately, I got tired of webmail login, so I investigated using an e-mail client such as Mozilla Thunderbird. I was able to successfully set them all up using POP3, but believe it or not, that is not what this post is about!

Although I had POP3 working fine, I soon found out that there was something even better – IMAP! Essentially, this allows you to access your e-mail similar to POP3, except that you view your mail like files on a remote server. You do not have to depend on mail being downloaded as you would if you were using POP3. Additionally, since there is a constant connection between the mail server and your mail client, you rarely (if ever) get disconnected even though you may spend several minutes compiling a very long e-mail.

The latter advantage was what I was looking for, since I usually encountered those disconnection errors. Since Gmail provides instructions for configuring your Gmail account and configuring Mozilla Thunderbird for IMAP, I was quick to change over from POP3. This is something I definitely do not regret! Furthermore, when I am on the road or need to access my mail through a public terminal I can still log in through the webmail interface.