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Yahoo! Mail Beta Goes Public
prostoalex writes "After months of being tested via limited beta, Yahoo! Mail Beta, developed after Oddpost acquisition, is now available to the world. From the review: 'The new Yahoo Mail Beta is touted as being as functional as a desktop email client (such as Outlook). Other new features include an integrated calendar timeline (including mashups with Yahoo Maps), drag and drop e-mail organization, message preview, tabs for messages, plus an integrated RSS reader.' Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg was using Yahoo! Mail Beta back in September of last year and wrote the following: 'I've been comparing the new version of Yahoo Mail, which claims to be the leader in Web mail, with Gmail, the challenger Yahoo most fears. My verdict: The new Yahoo Mail is far superior to Gmail. Yahoo more closely matches the desktop experience most serious email users have come to expect. Gmail, by contrast, is quirky and limited. Its only advantage is its massive free storage, which exceeds what most people will ever need.'"
And Gmail's address book, unlike Yahoo's, doesn't allow you to collect contacts into group addresses.
-from the article.
It's important to note that this statement is no longer true, despite the fact that it was back in 2005. Gmail may no longer be as "quirky and limited" as Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg once thought.
I have used Yahoo Mail Beta for a long time, and I do like the interface however there is alot of "lag" associated with it. Moving from folder to folder takes a good amount of time, and if you are accessing it from a slower PC this is very noticable.
I have not compared to Gmail however, but the lag gets to me.
I used the new interface of yahoo-mail for a while but decided to switch back to their vanilla interface. The main reason why I went back was speed. It was extremely slow (at least when I used it which is couple of months back). Also it would take a lot more time to log-in. Your main screen is split into three columns, one for the folders, one for the list of messages (with message preview at the bottom frame) and a third irritating column with flash ads. I didnt like the wastage of real-estate in my browser.
Was very slow compared to google here in Germany. So slow that I've switched back to the classic Yahoo! Mail.
Yeah, I think he's a bit more than a fanboy. FWIW, I actually love my Yahoo! Mail account (and I promise you I'm not affiliated with them), but...going to the link above the first heading I see is Yahoo! Tech gets a facelift. That article starts with this text:
We changed the face of Yahoo! Tech front page today
That's a wee bit more than a fanboy speaking. Or you could just do the google thing and find this bio as the first link.
Alex Moskalyuk is a full-time Technical Yahoo!...
It makes sense to have the option of removing your email from online storage.
Yahoo has that option but it costs money. Possibly that has changed.
Another of Gmail's "only advantage" [sic] is that you can change the "From:" header to other email addresses after authentication. Yahoo only offers "Reply-to:" modification. (Unfortunately, Microsoft Outlook uses the "Sender:" header in email display.)
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
I've been in the Yahoo Mail beta for some time now, and it is a solid web-based email, with a lot of nifty features. The pros are not strong enough for me to switch permanently from GMail, however. But that's personal preference.
Yahoo Mail has an overall look/feel very similar to a desktop email client. *cough*Outlook*cough* The integration with RSS, maps and calendars is very nice, search is fast and relevant, being able to drag-drop everything is fun, and the tabbed email interface is a great way to quickly switch between different emails that you have open.
That said, there are some cons, and they're doozies. The first is the ads. Tons of 'em, each pretty flashy, and they're all over the place... and strategically placed near locations you're likely to click. The other is just an annoyance factor, and may in fact be limited to IE, since I haven't used Yahoo Mail in anything other than IE. Yes, I use IE. Anyway, whenever I do *anything* in Yahoo Mail, such as load an email for reading, or even click over to my inbox, I'm presented with at least a dozen "link-click" sounds. This is just annoying if you use the default XP theme, and if you use a Star Wars theme -- as I sometime do -- a single click action becomse a minute-long lightsaber battle.
Other than those two complaints, though, Yahoo Mail is a very solid mail client.
In comparison to GMail, however, I have to stick to GMail. I'd love to see some of the features available in the Yahoo Beta put into GMail, but I can live without 'em. I can't live without GMail's "Conversation" email grouping feature, and I'd rather have Tags than folders any day of the week. And GMail's Archive feature... I had to go searching for something I had archived as unnecessary a few months ago on my GMail account, part of an old somewhat silly conversation now dead. Had I had the conversation through my Yahoo account, I'd have deleted the emails outright.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Yahoo Mail's ads are trivial to block. I have just a few Adblock filters set up that relate to Yahoo, and it's been months since I've seen any ads except for the text-based ones.
I've been pretty happy with Gmail because its very convenient but if Yahoo are going to trump it then go on, someone tell us what its got.
I've been using both Yahoo Mail and Gmail since their respective launches and I just switched over to the Yahoo beta and immediately switched back.
I'm not sure where the idea is coming from that people who use web mail want a desktop style interface. Outlook isn't exactly known for its speed or intuitiveness, and that's what the new Yahoo Mail is emulating. I couldn't tell you if it has more features than Gmail or not, because the only features I need are compose, send, reply and forward. The ability to attach files is nice, but that's pretty basic (though a lot more useful if you have a lot of storage space, i.e. Gmail).
The new Yahoo Mail may appeal to a certain type of user, but it is outright bloatware for those of us who use email in traditional ways, which I would argue is probably the majority of users out there. It's pretty ironic, but Gmail actually works more like a traditional, old-school email application - no folders, no clutter, not a lot of options. What options do you really need?
I have a relatively fast computer - a Turion 64 with 1GB of RAM. Both Gmail and the old Yahoo Mail load in less than 1 second for me. The New Yahoo Mail took 5 seconds to load. That may not seem like a lot, but everything I did also took 5 seconds. That adds up when you consider that in any given email session, I might make 30 clicks. It gets frustrating fast when your email doesn't respond immediately, or takes noticeable amounts of time to redraw pages. I also didn't like the obtrusive ads in the new interface.
So I switched back. I don't use Yahoo Mail as my primary account anymore anyway, but if they switch to the new interface exclusively, I may just give it up altogether.