iPad Mini and accessing PN emails?

[#1]

Hi All
I did post over TBB but must be post Xmas day tiredness now thought to ask hereabouts  
I bought SWMBO an iPad Mini for Xmas but this a hurdle setting her email access..................I foolishly thought that Outlook.com was MS Outlook and tried in vain to use the PN settings to access.  So having found this page on the Portal http://www.plus.net/support/email/setup/ios-setup.shtml I now see there is on the face it a straightforward way to do the deed but the question I have is as follows:-
Her email account is a mailbox in my account i.e. username@PNusername.plus.com and on my PC and indeed her laptop we have MS Outlook and the various accounts are POP3 but I gather from reading the help on the linked page that IMAP is best for mobile devices???
So can:-
1) Can there be IMAP on the iPad and POP3 on the laptop/PC?
2) If POP3 is used on the iPad (subject to what the answer to (1) above is) then as the iPad will be downloading a copy of the emails will they be deleted from the server when deleted on the iPad (NB for the record I have the laptop/PC Outlook settings to leave the emails on the server account for a number of days & delete if deleted in Outlook when synced) or is there a like setting on the iPad (not mentioned that I could see on the page linked tutorial???)
Just trying to make sure she can access/use the iPad for sending & receiving emails but without impacting on her laptop/PC use & retention of the same emails
Many thanks in advance for the feedback and guidance  
Edit ~ if IMAP Is best is there a simple way to change to it from POP3 without starting again creating the MS Outlook account???

[#2]

Hi,
Surprised that no one as answered this sooner for you.  It is a straight forward issue which everyone runs into, as soon as they want two or more devices to access the same email box.  POP3 (which tends to be the default configuration) is far from ideal for multi client operation.
Mixing POP3 and IMAP though technically possible is not overly useful.
POP3 removes all emails (there at the time of connection) from the server and stores them on that client device.  There is then nothing to be found on the server by any other client device.  Sent emails are held only on the client device which sent them.
IMAP synchronises the client's view of the mailbox with the contents of the server.  The content of the server is unaffected, thus other clients can also see the same emails as well.  If configured correctly, sent emails are also stored on the server, no matter which client sends them.
Any use of POP3 when there is a need to use more than 1 client is likely to lead to problems.  If a POP3 client is left running (typically the main PC) then new emails are unlikely to be seen at all on the IMAP mobile devices.  Worse still, if several POP3 clients are in use, no one if them will hold the entirety of your emails - you will have big headaches trying to locate past emails - both received and sent.
The best solution is to use IMAP on all devices and configure all of them to store sent emails on the server.  This way all devices can see all emails all of the time, no matter when received or from where they were sent.
To switch from where you are to a new world, you need to decide if you need the emails on the POP3 client available elsewhere.  Whatever, you need to stop the POP3 client working (downloading new emails), without loosing the emails already stored on the device.  If you do not know how to disable it from receiving, just change the password on the pop.plus.net connection to something different.
Set up new email 'accounts' on all of your devices, using IMAP (IMAP.plus.net) - when configuring the SMTP server (relay.plus.net) configure it as 'logon required' using the same username and password as the IMAP server and change the port number from 25 to 587.  This will allow mobile devices to send email via the PN relay service even when not connected via the PN network.
After you have made the first connection to the IMAP server (on each and every device) goto the IMAP folder management options and configure SENT / DELETED / DRAFTS to be stored on the matching server folders.
All emails received, sent or drafted will now be seen the same on all devices, no matter which device you look at or which one sent the email.  We run our email service in this manner - we have a number of shared business email boxes, all accessible from six devices - 2x laptops, 2x iPads and 2x iPhones - thereby we can both keep abreast of new email no matter where we are.
Now back to the existing POP3 emails.  If you want these to be accessible on all devices, then on the computer which now has both IMAP and POP3 configuration, drag the emails from the POP3 inbox to the IMAP inbox. This will in effect, send the emails back to the server, which will thus make them visible on all of your devices.
HTH!