GMail has been on a roll with its continuous enhancements and additions to its ever-existent good value. Sounds like I’m selling it to you and Google is paying me to do it. LOL. No. GMail IS the preferred free mail service of the geeks (which means pretty much the world of internet for me). Frankly, I hardly see anyone using the annoying, heavier,taking-more-time-to-load and the graphically extravagant Yahoos and Live inboxes. And then, when you think that GOOG has done it all, they come up with IMAP integration. Unlike the normal notion, it has NOTHING to do with Apple and the I in IMAP is in CAPITAL LETTERS. Right, so we did have POP before for GMail integration with your mobile mail accessing device ( smart phones, PDAs, Blackberry et al, oh yeah I wouldn’t forget the iPhone with the small ‘i’). But what was annoying there was that, the read mails in your device/Mail Client didn’t reflect in the actual inbox when you access it from your laptop/workstation (another politically correct statement-which spans across PC-typically Windows users, Linux users and Mac users). Not anymore.

Enter IMAP. The two way communication path. In the words of Sze-jun Tsai from the GMail Blog ;

A two-way communication path (IMAP). Unlike with POP, your devices talk back to our servers and sync your changes automatically with IMAP. When you sign in to your Gmail account in a web browser, actions you’ve taken on your email client or mobile device (like putting a message in a ‘work’ folder) will also appear in Gmail (your message will already have a ‘work’ label on it). This all happens automatically once you set up IMAP, so you don’t have to read or sort all your mail twice. This is really helpful when accessing Gmail from multiple devices.

Now, besides the obvious advantage of synchronising the usage of GMail across your portable device and your not-so portable device, there are some more added features. Like, the ability to use filters and Labels, and yes, the changes are synchronised over all accessible points of GMail. That means, if you create a label name in your Thunderbird, it would be visible on your Inbox on your laptop, as well as your Blackberry/iPhone-saving you irritation and time.

Setting up IMAP is as easy as 1, 2,3..Follow the simple steps below.
1.Sign in to GMail, go to Settings, Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP and Enable IMAP.
2.Configure your IMAP client.
3.Save changes.

4th invisible step: Moonwalk with a Happy face. LOL.