I love using IMAP servers for my Email, becouse I have many accounts I access from many machines, and I never have jumped on board the “Webmail Bandwagon”. For those who may not understand the difference between POP and IMAP. POP3 fetches email from a server and downloads it onto your computer (you can choose to either keep or delete your email from the server). IMAP allows you to access your email directly from the server without having to download you email.

I like a good old fashioned eMail client that is  functional and simple. I guess I am just a holdout from the 90′s. So I have a handful of accounts for bills and services, one for personal, and a School email.  Using the IMAP gives me syncronisation between my laptop and my desktop – and if I have neither available and am using someone elses computer I resort to web-mail only as a last resort.However, the one drawback I have found, is the lack of access to my address book on both machines. The Thunderbird Plugin Adressbooks Synchronizer doesn’t exactly synchronize, but it can store my address book locally, remotely over HTTP or FTP, and in an IMAP foulder.

After downloading and installing the plugin I go to tools and add-ons to configure the plugin. I select to back up both personal and collected addresses. I click on the IMAP tab and click the radio button and select a folder I previously made specifically for my address book. With that done, I check mark Auto download on startup and Auto upload on exit. I click upload and watch the dialog box telling me that its accessing the IMAP server and uploading my addresses.

Now if you do have access to an FTP/HTTP account the same processes is employed, saved for selecting the Remote tab and imputingyour server information. Alternatively you can choose a local directory to store your address book information.

The drawback to this method is there is a brief pause when you start and close Thunderbird as it fetches your address book, but it gives me access to the same addresses on both my desktop and laptop. By doing it with IMAP i have my address books sitting in a separate folder as attachments which can be imported into other clients. Some Web-mail clients and provides give you the option to import address books from file. The IMAP option is handy for those who do not have a FTP/HTTP server account of their own.

This plugin makes it easy to keep backups, and to keep multiple machines running Thunderbird in sync with your address books.