All right, so it looks like that after you've been out of school for a year, they won't let you use the school e-mail account anymore. I've been using school e-mail accounts for seven years now, and I DON'T LIKE CHANGE. But this one is being forced on me.

I do have a Gmail account, but I'm not really keen on the interface. I could get used to it since it seems to be the popular choice, but a major concern I have is that it doesn't seem to have IMAP support. This is how I like using my mail:

1. I keep Outlook Express open all the time. This keeps the program where I want it on the taskbar.
2. At work (or anywhere else I'm not at home), I check my e-mail through the web. Receive, send, everything. I've never even bothered to set up an address book online; I just wait till I get home if I need an address.
3. When I get home, all my e-mails are sitting in my Outlook Express inbox, already marked as read, so I just move them into their proper archive folders.
4. Sent mail from OE is automatically stored on the server; I archive it monthly. I CC sent mail from the webmail since it doesn't automatically go into the Sent Items folder.
5. At home, OE checks e-mail every five minutes, and I read and move into its respective archive folder.

What's the best (free) way for me to continue with the status quo?

Do you have email through your internet provider? That would likely work with OE.

Oh, right, I do. That's a good point. But I was thinking I should get a stable webmail address so that I don't have to change e-mail addresses when I change service providers.

Plus, Comcast is...you know, Comcast.

Free webmail services don't tend to be IMAPpy. In fact, I'm glad that Gmail is even POPpy, since one of the reasons I stopped using Yahoo mail was their lack of same.

I'm not sure what part of your scenario can't be achieved with POP access. It sort of sounds like how I use the email sent to my main email domain--I have Eudora open 24/7. Primarily so Spamnix can do its job and delete the emails that it IDs as spam.

I use my domain webmail app to check from everywhere but home, and when I get home I grab what's still in my inbox and deal with it appropriately.

You could do something like that with Gmail, I'm sure.

My understanding was that POP actually grabs the e-mail off the server, so if I had a mail program checking the account, it would pull it and pop it into a local folder on my computer so that I couldn't see it online. If that's not the case, then cool.

Eudora can be told to delete or not delete. Some mail gets filtered off the server, but stuff that's not spam and goes to my profile addy sits there for me to reach from anywhere.

As far as I can tell, I can't make OS X's Mail delete off the server automatically or based on rules. I have to do it from the mail client itself.

Nothing inherent in POP demands deletion.

Have a look at Pegasus Mail. I haven't used it in a while, but I think it will do what you are asking, and I remember that can be set to read but not delete the mail on the POP server.

It looks like OE has an option to leave a copy of the e-mail on the server. Does it realize that it's pulled it, however? Because, say, if I don't manually delete the e-mail from the server, will it pull the entire inbox down every time it checks?

I've just never used POP before, so I don't know...how to use it.

No, it knows what it's grabbed. Otherwise it'd be no use.

For dog's sake, P-C, stop using OE for email. Irrespective of how many updates and new security features it has, it is still the worst offender for spreading worms and virii. Opera isn't just for web browsing, it also has an email client amd usenet client builtin. Alternatively, there is the aforementioned Eudora, or Pegasus. There's also Mozilla Thunderbird, and you can still find a copy of Calypso floating around the net. The latter is the program I'm constantly hawking b/c I've been using it since 1998 and have never had any problems with it whatsoever. The program creators stopped developing it and put it on the net for free, and while it might be a few years old, it will do everything you want it to do ... namely, send and receive text email (or HTML if you must use it but I believe that type of email is abhorrent and should be banned). It also lets you choose between IMAP or POP3, can handle multiple accounts, and can let you choose to download and delete the message from the server, or download and leave the msg on the server.