The Troubles With the Yahool Mail Beta

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo Mail recently launched their new webmail service, dubbed Beta (yes just like gmail) no doubt hoping to win back market share in the world of webmail. Their prime competition is gmail, which they've modeled some of the new features on, but Yahoo Mail Beta falls very short of offering a similar experience. The ad infested new Yahoo Mail is patchwork of ideas halfway implemented and glaring usability problems."

1GB is more than enough ? ... not for me

[iMaple]

The article claims that

yahoomail gives you 1gb, either way it's much more than anyone will ever need.

Well, I dont know if this is the norm and I am just an exception but my gmail account says "You are currently using 1301 MB (47%) of your 2769 MB."

Comparitively

[cuteseal]

Well it's certainly not as smooth or polished as Gmail, but I definitely prefer it to Windows Live Mail. I feel it falls into a different kettle of fish to Gmail though. Yahoo Mail attempts to emulate the desktop type feel, while Gmail is just doin' it's own thing. :D

allocating 828×588 pixels to Firefox seems we

[Anonymous Coward]

To make one of his point, the guy points out that 828x588 are allocated to Firefox on his desktop. So either he's running on an old CRT monitor at a weird resolution or he's on a 1024x768 screen and he's some kind of a masochist. I don't see the point, in this day and age, to run Firefox in 828x588 when you can go "fullscreen". Note that I don't say you should always run Firefox in full screen (I sure wouldn't a 30" display, for example) and I'm not "defending" webdesigner pooping website that only looks OK at 1024x768 or more. But here, the guy needs to learn to use virtual desktops... Or simply alt+tab. I mean, frankly, what's the fscking point of running Firefox not maximized *on a small 1024x768 monitor* !? Maybe to see the "ooooh shiny desktop icons" (because of course the mouse is essential to navigate/launch proggys)? This post brought to you on a 1600x1168 Firefox window, located on one out of 12 virtual desktops, on a Metacity window manager that has no icon (no Nautilus, thank you very much). I really mean: WTF?

The problem with yahoo...

[ravee]

The main problem with yahoo mail beta is the time it takes to load the interface in the web browser. It takes much longer to load yahoo beta than it takes gmail to load its mail interface.

On top of that, when you compare the sheer number of features that come with gmail, yahoo mail falls too short.

But I do like the new interface of yahoo mail beta - maybe they need to make further refinements and add new features which provide value.

Come on..

[eebra82]

If only companies who advertise on sites like Yahoo Mail realized that less is more, we wouldn't have this kind of problem.

Why not pay five times more to get ten times the attention? It's common sense: put your cheap ad on page 23 of a news paper, filled with tons of other ads and you end up paying for very little attention.

I personally notice the ads on Slashdot every time I visit this page, but if it was filled up, it would just blur into the rest of the page and become less valuable.

Just got the yahoo beta today.

[MMC Monster]

First my background: I was a big Yahoo email guy for a number of years. I started using gmail a couple years ago. I still keep my yahoo email address but don't use it much.

I find the yahoo approach somewhat old compared to the clean lines of gmail. In particular, after tagging emails in gmail, it's a little hard to go back to the folder paradigm. Another issue is the home page within the email client that doesn't show you your email. If I want yahoo as my home page, I will set it up that way. It also seems somewhat slow (I'm using a 3GHz P4 w/ 2GB ram running firefox on WinXP on a T1 connection) compared to gmail.

This is totally separate from the gross number of adds on the email site. Thankfully, adblock seems to be able to block out the vast majority of them.

While I had high hopes for the new yahoo email client (I actually like the yahoo.com site redesign), I think it's too little, too late.

Whatever.

[BaldingByMicrosoft]

Maybe this article will sway the opinion of people who are deciding on a new free email service to join. Hopefully folks will decide on more than this piece of writing.

The title of the article, "gmail beta vs yahoo mail beta", implies some sort of comparison between the services. What it seems to actually be is a 1,723 word (with associated screen-shots) criticism of Yahoo!'s product.

I had my Yahoo! email address before PigeonRank was a twinkle in a Google geek's eye. There are things I like and dislike about both Yahoo!'s and Google's interfaces. I consider Yahoo!'s new interface an improvement over the old one -- it's a considerable facelift, and works with IE and Firefox. Bottom line for me is that the real value of their services lies not in their interface, but the ability to exchange information. Yahoo! is more valuable to me, because folks know they can contact me at that address. It all makes me wonder if the author even bothered to give Yahoo! feedback on their product, or just wanted to show off their l33t ranting ability.

Re:Just got the yahoo beta today.

[garcia]

after tagging emails in gmail, it's a little hard to go back to the folder paradigm.

While I use GMail for archival of all my e-mail (since 6/22/04), I don't find the labels to be all that great of a feature. In fact, I use them just like I do folders. I tag e-mails based on whatever and then, in order to effectively search, I have to click the tag and then search within the tag (the search function *never* returns what I'm looking for if I search all e-mail)).

So while I use the tags it's not exactly like they are being used any differently for me than folders were and I know plenty of people that don't tag anything and instead just kind use GMail as if it had 6MB of space (my parents included).

Gmail only superior in some ways.

[krell]

"Gmail is superior in every way to any mail platform except some corp/gov custom environments."

It's better when it comes to how the UI looks (colors, characters) and the lack of add clutter. It's much worse the way it jumbles inbox/etc emails into "groups" that have nothing to do with anything and make it hard to find past received emails. This idea isn't that hot: notice the lack of other companies immitating the useless scrambling of Gmail's folders. (I understand how it is MEANT to be used, and how it is SUPPOSED to work. However, I prefer my email properly organized for ease of use, and don't like how Gmail is not good at what it is supposed to do and ends up breaking a single "conversation" into several different groups).