IMAP's advantages are advantages for the end user, not the people who implement it like ISP's...

As a former email admin, IMAP is far superior in many respects from my point of view. An ISP has very few requirements to their customers, but working as an admin, I have to deal with the most asinine requests. One of the common ones is ``Can you undelete my mail?''. With POP, this would require backing up every person's workstation in order to comply. With IMAP, I can just back up the server. Much easier. Also, when dealing with your mail from multiple locations, IMAP wins in usability hands down. Imagine downloading all 1000 messages in your POP account over a 56k modem every time you want to check your mail from a new computer. This is why web mail was invented, but I'm sick of having to have all applications run via a web browser (not to mention that most of them use IMAP on the back end anyway). This is easier on the admin because you don't have to listen to your users complain. Of course, there's also the issue of selecting an IMAP server that doesn't stink....