What is the next best thing to having an IMAP account for use with Apple Mail?

I would like to know what the benefits of a POP3 account are. I have been reading my SBCglobal mail on Apple Mail but hate that it takes all the emails off the sbc server when I look at them. I would like to switch it to IMAP but am finding out that yahoo doesn't support IMAP--I must have a POP3 account. Do I need this? Is this the solution to my problems? Will POP3 allow me to leave the emails on the server when Mail reads them?