Despite the fact that owning a Mac inevitably makes me a Mac evangelist, what I evangelise the most is Yahoo Mail. I’ve been telling people about it in person for some time now (usually with limited success) but this is the first time I’m blogging about it.
I used to have email accounts with Yahoo, Google and Hotmail but I have since closed my gmail account and moved the majority of my Hotmail emails over to an alternate Yahoo email address. Admittedly, the main reason I closed my gmail account was because I tend to direct spam there and it started sending out emails to contacts stored on my address book. I do think gmail is better than Hotmail Windows Live Mail (I suppose I should start using its real name. It makes me sound more scornful of it- which is exactly what I am).
While it is true that gmail is unbeatable when it comes to speed, its light interface comes at the expense of aesthetic design. Conversely, Windows Live Mail’s design-focus renders it slow and heavy. Yahoo Mail however, perfectly proportions aesthetics and speed – like a flawlessly iced cake that looks good while avoiding an overly gluggy 2 inch-thick icing and a marzipan flower garden.
On top of this, Yahoo Mail beats both gmail and Windows Live Mail when it comes to its UI. While I don’t want to go into its full list of features, I want to point out that Yahoo Mail is tabbing enabled. Since tabs have become a must-have web browser feature, its inclusion in Yahoo Mail is definitely welcome. One of the major perks of being able to compose an email in one tab and view an email in another is that now you can simply toggle between the two tabs when you need to refer to an email instead of continuously having to scroll up and down. This is made even more convenient with the inclusion of keyboard shortcuts which exist for many actions including ‘next tab’ and ‘previous tab’.
The inbox also has a quick view option where the screen is divided into two horizontal sections with the upper section containing the typical inbox view while the lower allows you to view the selected email. This gets rid of the hassle of continually returning to the inbox to choose emails to read.
One of the few negatives about Yahoo Mail is its inability to classify emails according to ‘read/unread’. However, this isn’t a problem native to Yahoo Mail as no other email client has this option either (I really find it curious how all hosts limit classification to either sender or date. To me, a read/unread classification seems like an obvious option). Another negative point is that it does feel quite a bit slower than gmail. However, I do think that half of this is due to the truly impressive speed of gmail and that the slightly slower loading times are more than made up for by the many other advantages Yahoo Mail has over gmail.
While I would love to give a conclusion (Yahoo Mail has the best overall package!!), I really do think my opinion is fairly obvious and this entry is long enough. Instead, I’ve thoughtfully decidedly to append some reviews because you must be completely obsessed with finding the perfect email host if you’ve diligently read this entry to the end.
Gmail vs Windows Live Mail vs Yahoo Mail betas, The Inquirer
1 Comment
January 22, 2009 at 11:30 am
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