I don't know if this is the best place for this question, but there didn't seem to be any better section of the forums. It does somewhat relate to MobileMe.
IMAP allows us to access and modify our email from anywhere and have changes to the message/folder data reflected in realtime as it is all hosted on a server. In this way it is superior to POP which stores all messages on a local computer and assumes you will only ever check email from that one location. The problem with IMAP arises however when you run out of server space to host all of your emails. Then what to do? You want to back up your old emails to a local machine so you can delete them from the server, but you still want them to be browsable your mail client so you can occasionally reference older messages.
What are some possible solutions to this dilemma? What is the best solution? Are the solutions different for Mail/Thunderbird/Entourage users? What about mac.com/me.com email addresses vs. other email addresses (for businesses etc.)
IMAP allows us to access and modify our email from anywhere and have changes to the message/folder data reflected in realtime as it is all hosted on a server. In this way it is superior to POP which stores all messages on a local computer and assumes you will only ever check email from that one location. The problem with IMAP arises however when you run out of server space to host all of your emails. Then what to do? You want to back up your old emails to a local machine so you can delete them from the server, but you still want them to be browsable your mail client so you can occasionally reference older messages.
What are some possible solutions to this dilemma? What is the best solution? Are the solutions different for Mail/Thunderbird/Entourage users? What about mac.com/me.com email addresses vs. other email addresses (for businesses etc.)