There's a big difference between what the original poster wanted - simultaneous multi-user access, which POP3 usually won't handle (but IMAP will), and what Peter describes - multi-user independent access, that is quite possible with POP3.

Is it possible to use Pegasus/Mercury to access a single POP3 email account from two computers at the same time without running into mailbox integrity issues?  We have been using Eudora on our desktop computer but if I install it on my wife's new laptop and then set it to use the same files on the desktop if both programs are accessing the same files at the same time things get messed up.  If not Pesasus is there an email program that can handle it?  Or am I basically asking for IMAP capabilities from POP3?

 Thanks,  Steve

Is it possible to use Pegasus/Mercury to access a single POP3 email

account from two computers at the same time without running into

mailbox integrity issues?

Nope, POP3 cannot handle multiple access.  Now if this is a "domain" style POP3 account where you use the email address of the user to get the mail then it's quite possible that the multiple access could be handled at the server level.

I really think though you are talking about two computers running the same version of Eudora at the same time from two different computers.  This cannot be done either.  You can run separate versions connecting to the same POP3 mailbox at different times (or a IMAP4 account at the same time).  The data must be separate.

Pegasus Mail now does have multiple user capability but even there the users personal mail directories must be separated.  It does have the capability though to use "public" folders for all to use concurrently.

Thanks for the reply...it's what I thought would be the answer but worth asking just in case.

We have a number of users who share the same maildrop. Pop3 sessions check, fetch and delete emails from the maildrop. If you tell your email clients to leave the messages within the maildrop for x number of days, good chances are that other machines using the same maildrop have enough time to pick up the mail before first client deletes the message from the server.

If you have IMAP clients using the same maildrops then at your server you should disable lingering mailboxes, so that the cache is not in the way.

The only problem with this setup is that you may have multiple people answering the same question back to the sender. We recommend then the setup of an internal mailing list called f.e.x support, and that any message they wnat to reply to, that originated from the list, also has to be Cc:ed back to the list as well as replied to the iriginator.

Actually, there is no problem in concurrently accessing a POP3 server from multiple Pegasus email clients. I have been doing this for several years.  Each client independently identifies unread messages using the message ID provided by the server.

In order for this to work reliably, one should set up each copy of Pegasus to...

1.  download only unread messages, and

2.   leave messages on the server after reading/downloading.

Every so often, it is wise to "clean up" the already-read messages on the server, in order to reduce the size of the mailbox, but more importantly, to increase the speed at which Pegasus checks for unread messages.