No one at Plymouth seems to publish the fact that you can actually access your @plymouth.ac.uk account through IMAP (Thunderbird or Outlook) and you wont have to use their awful web interface again.. and its better than pop3 - updated courtesy of Jim@Plymouth (05/08/2011)

Username is your full email first.lastname@students.plymouth.ac.uk
Password is your user account password - I was told I'd have to change my password before it would work for the accounts to sync. Also, the user has to be moved to the new @edu/outlook system which you can tell by looking at your OWA (simply put, is yellow) (Jim@plym, 2011)

• POP setting
• Server name: pod51013.outlook.com
• Port: 995
• Encryption method: SSL
•  
• IMAP setting
• Server name: pod51013.outlook.com
• Port: 993
• Encryption method: SSL
•  
• SMTP setting
• Server name: pod51013.outlook.com
• Port: 587
• Encryption method: TLS

make sure you authentic for the outgoing mail server or you wont be able to send. now you can check your emails hassle free and use a local client.