>>>I've spent about three days on IMAP when my then office switched to it, and didn't quite get it that the folders that I see are not really on my machine, they're on the server. So whatever I do, I do there, and everybody suffers :). I switched back to POP3 as soon as I understood how IMAP works, and guess what, the POP3 was turned off next day. I pretty much gave up on office emails after that, others had to tell me if I have something, and I wrote the emails in what I remember as the worst piece of M$ shit, its web based client, which always had its own ideas about formatting, quoting etc and wouldn't let me apply mine. Very restricting, and somewhere about 7th position in the list of reasons why I quit.
>>
>>Three days on IMAP... you have a lot of patience.
>
>„On“ as in „using it“. See below.
>
>> I am trying, right now, to set up one of my emails in Outlook, to use IMAP and I get nowhere. Very confusing.
>
>I've never used outlook, unless it came preinstalled on an office box. On my own box, never. The IMAP - well, Thunderbird detected everything in a microjiffy and adjusted the settings accordingly, so I did nothing there. It just started working when I closed the dialog.
>
>As for hosting, I maintain my website for about 20 years, and my own email server comes with it. First dozen years it cost me 20$/year, for the registrar only; now I'm paying 50$/y only to have more space.

In your last paragraph, do you mean that you have an account with an ISP and it cost you only $50/yr?
I have an account with DiscountAsp where I set up my work email (not Gmail). And so far this email, DiscountAsp email, works with POP3.
But the Gmail, again, won't allow my client to connect using POP3 :(