Mail.App and IMAP

This is probably an old topic, but I just switched from a 2006 iMac to a 2010 MBP. While setting up my gmail accounts in mail.app I noticed that it now defaults to IMAP instead of POP. I found a work around, but then said, screw it, I'll give IMAP a chance.
After setting up my accounts, mail.app starts downloading like 20,000 old email messages from gmail's servers onto my computer. I stop the download and realize I don't want all this old crap on my hard drive. How do I get around this?

Yeah, that's a real pain. One of the disadvantages of using GMail for storage. I learned long ago to keep my GMail account free of all the old messages that I no longer need by removing them from the server. Of course deleting 20,000 messages from your account off the server can take some time. And you might not want to do that.....

Do you really need an IMAP account? The only advantage to using one is if you have other devices that you need to sync mail to such as an iPhone.

Maybe someone else can come up with an easier way.

Hey CoolCheech, I feel your pain. I'm in an exact type of pickle now!! Well, it's a little different but stems from the IMAP Mail setting (I in fact need all my 20k emails downloaded on my HD, BUT I do not want to go through them all and sort them again into folders, which were arranged as I want them in my old MBP with Mail 4.2, but as I switched to a Lion MBA with Mail 5.1, the IMAP setting is the only setting available...so no POP.

So far I haven't found a way around this issue. If the email is on the server then the IMAP setting will download it to your computer. You can disable keeping copies of emails and attachments (Mail->preferences->Accounts->Advanced->in the first drop down box select "Don't keep copies of any messages". However, this will disable viewing the emails offline.

Apart from deleting the emails off your server, there's no way around this.