thunderbird question with gmail

[Paul Smith]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Paolo Galtieri <pgaltieri at gmail.com> wrote:
> Last Friday I was trying to download all my gmail email from google down to
> my PC.  I succeeded in getting everything from June of 2008 to July of
> 2009.  I had to stop at that point since I had to leave for the airport.
> When I tried today it told me there was nothing to do which of course is
> wrong since there is email from July 2009 to Dec 2009 to pull.  When I set
> the "pop for all mail" option in gmail  I was able to resume downloading
> email except that it started from June 2008, so now I have several hundred
> duplicate email messages.  How do I download the July 2009 - Dec 2009 emails
> without having to delete the June 2008 to July 2009 emails from gmail?  The
> only other option in gmail is the "pop for mail that arrives from now on"
> which starts from the current time.  Obviously I can delete all the already
> downloaded email and start over, but I was hoping for a better way.

Instead of using the POP3 protocol, why not using IMAP?

Paul