Mail and Multiple Machines

Does anyone know of a way (without having a .Mac setup) to sync mailboxes.

I have two machines running OS X.4 and have been having problems keeping my mail synced up. I accidentally deleted some mail off the server and now am trying to figure out how to transfer it from my laptop to my desktop.

In addition I have old 10.3 mailboxes that I would like combined into my current 10.4 mail stuff. I dont' want to lose any new data. I would also like to archive all mail on my system to a an external place for backup reasons.

Anyone know how to do these things?

Ideally I just want to take multiple mailboxes from my various Hard Drives and combine them so they are all quickly searchable, and then sync the messages between my laptop and desktop and have backups made. I assume there has to be either an Apple program or a third party one to do it.


Thanks

 

Well actually IMAP is my problem. AOL has a nice utility that allows you to use something like IMAP for their mail service. The problem is their server keeps deleting mail and tells Mail to also delete it, so I end up missing e-mails. If I could figure out how to turn the allow AOL to delete Mail mail messages I'd be fine, but so far no luck. I tried using forward to my gmail account and AOL doesn't have an auto forward method, so I tried using rules in Mail and they don't seem to be working (or don't opperate on old mail). In the process of trying to figure this all out I deleted all my AOL mail off the IMAP server (but it is still in Mail), the problem then became that my desktop updated the AOL box and said (begin personification of e-mail client) "Hmm AOL's server has no mail in it I better delete all mine"

So I lost all the e-mail that was in my IMAP AOL box on my desktop (fortunatly I have backups of it on my laptop). Its annoying that I can't keep them in my inbox in AOL since IMAP auto deletes old mail that AOL's server deletes. For now I have a work around but its not to my liking.

BTW I like AOL because it gives me dial up everywhere, and it is my oldest mail service so I have hundreds of people out there who have my AOL address, so dropping AOL isn't my preffered option, I have been trying to slowly transition to POP for my primary e-mail, gmail works fine except some servers block it.

So back to the question of how do I get my AOL IMAP client (Mail) to not delete messages. I want it to only be able to add new ones unless I delete them. Perhaps I need to set up my own IMAP box like someone suggested. I can't however afford to lose old mail. Its seems safer to have to manually weed through junk mail on both machines.


However keep in mind I have very large old mailboxes (archived from 3-4 years ago) that I'd like to keep backed up but also have them usable. I suspect with the newer computers (read MacPro) I can keep a 2+ gb mailbox without a huge speed penalty over what I have now.

So as a review:
1) how do I fix the problem where AOL IMAP server auto deletes messages after a certain date

2) how do I use all my old archived mailboxes without having to import and sort 3-4 years worth of e-mail?

 

The problem with IMAP is the AOL server auto deletes everything, if I knew how to turn the delete function on IMAP off it'd be fine.

The problem with POP is that it doesn't store sent messages on the gmail account. AOL's IMAP does this so I can access sent and received messages anywhere (until the server starts to auto delete them at which point I'm SOL).

I like POP because it doesn't auto delete, what I had been trying to do is auto Forward all my AOL IMAP incomming messages to gmail for POP that way auto archiving is really easy. But no good luck with that yet.

Additionally I dont' see any reason anyone would want to use anything other then Mail, despite its short commings. Though I have never used microsoft's client I have used their web client, there are a few nice things but most of it is a pain. Its just a shame no one has figured out how to do this easier. Realistically I should have my own server (and I run my desktop 24/7 to catch e-mails) but sometimes the power fails or something happens that would prevent me on relying on it as a total up time server, so I have to rely on services like gmail or AOL. Is there anyway to set up my home machine to act as my own personal server, so I could keep my e-mail on it and remotely search it?