Due to the constraints of the stream wrapper system in PHP, each time you attempt to read an email with this class, a seperate connection will be made to the POP3 server, and a fresh login performed. Using the opendir() commands will cause it to connect once, retreive the list of mail, and then disconnect. This is to avoid causing problems on POP3 servers that only allow a single login, or "lock" the mailbox. Because of this, it is not recommended to use this stream wrapper/class as a basis for a webmail system. It will be fairly slow. It is however ideal for translating emails into other systems, such as an email-to-RSS application, email-to-Blog and so on.