How should I receive my mails today? Should I user POP3 or better IMAP? What are my options and what are the differences and benefits? When should you use POP3 and when IMAP?

The POP3 setup. After you’ve entered your account credentials like your login name and password you need to make your first decision. Do you want to leave all received messages on the server or not. When you leave the message on the server, your account may run out of space after some time. When you delete emails after receipt from the server you can’t get it on a different computer again. So, when you’re working on only one single computer, it’s better to delete mails from server immediately after you’ve downloaded them. With POP3 every received mail is stored on your local hard disk. Therefore it’s no problem to read it when you have no internet connection.

But what do you do when you have multiple computers or multiple users who should get the email? You guess right ” you use IMAP. With IMAP you’re working directly ON the mail server. Your email reader usually only receives a list of your email headers from the server which saves time and bandwidth on emails you don’t want to read. The result is that emails aren’t stored on your local hard disk. But you can tell your email program to save a local copy, so that you’re still able to work with your emails in offline state. The next benefit of IMAP is that your folder structure, which is stored on the server, is the same on every computer you access your mails. Think of a family folder for your personal mails and a work folder for your business mails.

What means this all for you? Use POP3 when you have only a single computer where you receive your emails and you’re the only one who has to read the mail. Activate that emails should be deleted from the mail server when you have received them and you can forget about your mail account running out of space.

Use IMAP when you have more than one computer or others should get the email, too. But you have to care about the mail server’s space to not run full. You need to delete or backup mails from time to time. When you’re often on the road and don’t have internet access, make sure you store an additional copy of your mails on your hard disk.

Dominik writes for soft-evolution, a software vendor, specialized on team scheduling software. soft-evolution is developer of Pimero an Personal Information Manager which addresses the needs of small and mid-sized companies.

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Are you and your colleagues still working alone? Then you really should think about building up a team and start working together.

Today’s specialized world needs specialized people who know their area best. As no one can be an expert in all areas of a whole product lifecycle, working alone means to do some parts well and others not. A better way is to split the process into different parts and delegate every task to the person who has the best skills for it.

By distributing the workload you will get more satisfaction. Interaction with other people results in higher enthusiasm and creativity. Just think about how an idea grows while you talk to different people, everyone with his own personal attributes and knowledge. The diversity of ideas raises the reliability and quality of the final product. Making better decisions decreases the risk of failures and you will finish your project faster. A nice side effect is that you get to know your co-workers much better – maybe there’s your new friend sitting just a room away.

When you’re building up the team you have to keep in mind that every team member has to identify himself with the project. Everyone is different and has his personal motivation within the project. Working in a team means to give everyone, the shy guy and the self confident guy, the chance to be productive and satisfied in his own manner.

There are a couple of good tools which make a project start easier. Don’t forget ” You’re working in a team now and communication is essential. When you don’t communicate and try to do your own stuff, the whole project process will stuck and the quality of your output will decrease. A good communication platform, where every team member has equal possibilities to bring in his ideas can ensure the project’s success.

Ever missed a meeting or forgot to call back a customer at a scheduled time? Yes, then you should get a Personal Information Manager (PIM) which helps you to organize your daily work.

3 must have features of a modern PIM: 1. Enable you to easily manage your appointments, emails, contacts, tasks and notes 2. Allow you to work together in a team and share information 3. You should be able to work offline and sync all changed data when you’re online again.

When you still miss one of these options during your daily work, you should consider getting your first or a new PIM. Most users will think about MS Outlook as the first choice. But today there are a lot of alternatives on the market which do the same job for lower costs. The initial high price and the need for an Exchange Server is often a knock out criteria for Outlook. This is what you have to look for, when you’re searching for a new Personal Information Manager:

The most important task a PIM should do, is to manage your data. It needs to organize your appointments, store all your contacts and give you the possibility to create tasks. Look on your monitor. Do you see any Post-Its? Then take them away. A modern PIM should have notes, too. Last but not least, you need an email client to stay connected with all other people outside.

Working together with your team members will rise the production level of your company immediately. A modern PIM should allow you to share your information with other people. Additionally you should be able to create multi-user items, like a meeting appointment for you and your co-workers. This, of course should be possible for all other data items within your PIM, too.

A good PIM should sync all information between all users or computers. The data should be stored locally on every users computer and therefore could be accessed even when there’s no connectivity to the network. The result is, that you don’t need to stop your work. You can just continue and the program will sync the new or changed data with all other clients when the network is available again. This is how it should be.