The Troubles With the Yahool Mail Beta 239
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
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1. GMail has 2769MB currently (and counting)
2. It's really a new service by "Yahool Mail Beta" and not "Yahoo! Mail Beta". Yahool is a Trademark of Google Inc. and is not to be confused with Yahoo! in any way!
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What are you smoking?
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I'm only using a couple hundred MB, however. I would use more if the gdrive filesystem was available for WinXP/Linux/MacOSX and was completely compatible amongst the three.
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Grab the Gmail File Space extension for Firefox. http://www.rjonna.com/ext/gspace.php [rjonna.com]
I'm pretty sure it works with all platforms
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Once my users understand how it's meant to be used, it's a universal winner.
What seals the deal is being implemented with SSL POP access... so the dinosaurs who refuse to budge don't have to.
Better mousetrap
Gmail only superior in some ways. (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Gmail only superior in some ways. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no idea what you're referring to. For me, a single conversation thread (both sent and received) is displayed all in one page, and I can apply multiple labels to the thread to have the whole thread appear in all relevant categorizations I want without having multiple copies of any of the emails within that thread. Can you clarify what you are seeing?
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For me, it is better; I figured that out when I noticed myself looking for the archive button in other email systems.
No, that is NOT the only difference (Score:2)
I can have a "project" folder, and can have a dozen subfolders inside of it.
OR, I can have a "work" folder that contains a project folder, and a "consulting" folder that contains a "Project" folder.
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Just out of curiosity, why would you want to delete all mails you sent?
Imsdal's Corporate Survival Tip(TM): Both at my current and former job, I seem to be the only person who save all my e-mails. I also send e-mails with understandings, working notes, comments etc. frequently (as do a lot of other people). Since I save my e-mail, I can very often go
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Generally speaking, this is a big point of tension between IT staff and the rest of the company. I worked for companies where the users considered PCs to be glorified typewriters, and only after I realized that my job was to dumb down their computers instead of teaching them to appreciate technology, my job became worthwhile. Since then, I learned to think as the average user, and here's why I recommended everybody in my company
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This works very well if you are a psychic, and know before the fact which e-mails you are going to need. But, pray tell, if you are a psychic, why bother with e-mail anyway?
On a more serious note, how do you know which e-mails you will need? I do grant you that 90% of all e-mails I get I will never look again, but it's
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Although I prefer Gmail as my main mail account I think the Yahoo mail interface is not bad at all. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread they seem to
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"Over 2770.008107 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message."
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Damn you Google! Always stealing my +5 Funny.
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Re:1GB is more than enough ? ... not for me (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't disagree with your overall point, just want to point out one shouldn't assume that deleting a given message results in Google not having access to it. Google may well hold onto some or all of what a user marks for deletion, but simply remove it from being available to the user. Whatever cap on per-user storage space that Google of
Comparitively (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well there's damning it with faint praise, eh?
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dubbed (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think that word means what you think it means....
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> I don't think that word means what you think it means....
So, "to call by a distinctive title, epithet, or nickname" isn't one of its meanings [m-w.com]?
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"beta" has been applied to both systems as a moniker, not just to show its development status. you have made the mistake of having too narrow a definition for the use of the word "beta". the grandparent is right, they were both "dubbed" "Beta" because they are both called "beta" as a title or nickname.
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dub - verb ( dubbed , dubbing ) [ trans. ] - giv
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I like to argue minutae too. That's all we're doing.
A step in the right direction (Score:5, Informative)
Gmail is for plain mail. Yahoo seems to be for those who want the outlook emulation via web-browser. Gmail never captured my interest in the look/feel of an outlook replacement.
Yahoo has a way to go to get me to switch, but for a yahoo-hater in the past like me, I have to give them a thumbs up for the effort.
Yo Grark
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Gmail has real innovation in an email client. Discussion topics are grouped, labels are better than folders and "archive and search" has changed the way I file emails - who needs an elaborate outlook style folder structures, just archive and search
I'm so used to Gmail for my personal email that I have installed Google desktop search at work (where we HAVE to use outlook) just so I can properly search my emails and I know longer have to spend all
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I don't want to use outlook. Or any other replacement really. I tried, honestly, but it's just not the same as web-based email. I'm used to quality, and I don't intend to go a step down. Using AJAX is a nice touch, and it was to be expected, but outlook is definitely not what I want from a mail app.
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However, if Yahoo decides that I need to use their new Outlook-type system, that might get me to change to GMail. It just might be more annoying than letting everyone on
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I know you were being sarcastic, but quite frankly, the answer from millions of office workers would indeed be a resounding "Yes!"
I know this is slashdot. We're all more technical than that, and loathe outlook for a myriad of reasons. Yahoo! Mail isn't really targeted at us. We're a minority that can never really be pleased anyway.
The CEO, his executive assistant, HR, and the receptionist, on the other hand, like outlook, because it's what they k
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The sky is blue. Whee-hee-hee I'm insightful!
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Like what, other than an awful 'labels' system and slow loading times?
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Searching in Outlook works reasonably well through Google Desktop or other similar products. But it's really pathetic that other products shou
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I've used Gmail for well over a year, side by side with Yahoo, and with Gmail it's like everything falls into a black hole, and I have to "search" every single time I want to find something. At least with Yahoo, the organization makes a lot more sense, and I have to do "search" a lot less.
This illisurates why you do not like GMail. You sound like an old man clamoring on and on about how "cars were more reliable in his day", totally ignoring the statistical facts.
The whole point of GMail is the exact reaso
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Now I have these inscrutable "me, Rob" groups for them.
Do you mean to say your inbox doesn't display the subject of the conversation thread next to the list of people who sent an email in the conversation thread?
One single conversation has been broken up by Gmail's inbox-scrambler into 5 or 6 of their "conversation" groupings.
Guess that answers question from my previous post. Can you post a screenshot of this? I've never seen this happen. The only thing I can think of is that you and your friends indi
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I have yet to experience this scambling of incoming messages and "blackhole" you keep referencing. I have two accounts. One for personal mail and the other for all the security mailing lists I subscribe to.
The organizational level is light years beyond Yahoo. I have rulesets set up to automatically label messages and get them out of the inbox (I
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How can you have 'single email "conversation' (a conversation with only one email in it), and how is it being broken up?
I think I understand what you're complaining about, but you really suck at explaining it. I think you're complaining that for a given thread of email (for example, 16 emails sent/received with the subject "I'm having a party on saturday"), gmail groups them all together into one link when viewing your inbox. This lin
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I almost forgot to ask about this. What exactly are you referring to here? Are you saying you had to click a link to be able to edit the subject of an email you're composing? I haven't ever once seen a gmail compose mail window without a plain editable text field for the subject. If you're talking about anything, you'll have to clarify.
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mail says Inbox (1) (because there's only one thread with new messages) and I can only see one new name in the 'From:' column. So I click on the thread and read 'my new message', and often don't realise there's another one off the bottom of the screen (as the right-hand scroll-bar is my only clue).
The Inbox label on the left shows (1) new conversation, but the display of conversations in Inbox should show (2) next to the conversation if there are 2 new emails present (it does for me).
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I like to insist on subjects for emails being as accurate as possible.
After the first email is sent, I never actually read the subject header. I'm guessing there are plenty of other people like me, who will all be wondering why you can't ever just hit reply, type in your reply, and hit send, instead of screwing up my threaded-by-conversation view (be it in gmail, outlook, or thunderbird). Judging by how meny posts it took you to clarify your complaint to most of us replying to you, I'd say you're not nea
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I like to be considerate to others and put "payment sent" or "box mailed" or "have you paid yet?" etc in the email subjects.
I would hate emailing with you. I prefer the new topic = new email thread method, and archive all the realted emails into a label/folder. I can't stand having one huge monolithic thread with 7 topics being discussed.
I already posted the feature suggestion link in a prior reply in this thread.
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I guess gmail works best with gmail, and the rest of the internet mail world workss best with itself.
gmail works just fine with every other email server. You just have a different preference about how to optimally use email.
But tell me, what would you rather see if using eBay: 10 mails with the subject "EBAY ITEM #10021010" never changing, or descriptive subjects like "EBAY ITEM #1002101 PAYMENT SENT" describing each thing going on?
Saying you sent payment is not changing the topic of discussion. It's
allocating 828×588 pixels to Firefox seems we (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:allocating 828×588 pixels to Firefox seems (Score:2)
do the math ? (Score:2)
The 1 click is faster; do that many times and you will see the outcome of that one click is saving you hours on a year...
with alt-tab; which I sometimes use too; I sometimes miss my window ; which will pop-up another window; even with powertoys installed...
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Re:allocating 828×588 pixels to Firefox seems (Score:2)
Re:allocating 828×588 pixels to Firefox seems (Score:2)
Windows and Mac (IIRC) have never been very big on the vitual desktop thing, and while I find it second nature, it's important to realise that some people prefer to use a taskbar.
This kind of debate comes out in user interface design. Some people want to have unique windows for every instance of a program, and others prefer to use tabs. At the
The problem with yahoo... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Gmail has great organizational features for the inbox. Instead of moving things to different "boxes", it uses a much more sensible approach, IMHO. You can label a conversation (manually or through an automatic filter you've set up). You can then view all messages with a particular label by clicking the name of that label on the left hand side of your screen.
The search feature is there, but I've never use
Come on.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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
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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)).
Clicking on a label is really just doing a search for that label. If you wanted to search for ubuntu in emailes labeled Linux you could just put "Label:Linux ubuntu" in the search field. You can do the same for things like "From:", "to:", "Subject:", "before:", "after:", and "Date:". You can also put multiple qualifiers (like a couple of l
ummm, double click? (Score:4, Informative)
I guess genius here never tried to double click any of the messages. It opens it in a new minitab within the Y!mail main window/tab.
Ajax Bad (Re:ummm, double click?) (Score:2)
It's Not About GMail or AJAX or... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh, of course! Why would anyone be so silly as to think that single-clicking something on a web page would give you the desired result? Just because everything on the web is controlled by single-clicking, and you basically never double-click within a web browser (and sometimes if you do, things get sent twice), of course he should have thought to double-click when single-clic
Whatever. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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My comments were never meant to be anything but a spew of my opinions, and I never represented them otherwise. Granted, that's what we all do anyway to some degree, no matter how our opinions are packaged or how much we think they're -the- facts, but the average domesticated primate doesn't grok that.
The "free-flow and exchange of ideas" could happen a lot more easily if we properly represented the context of said ideas. If the title and posturing of that article was "Piss On Yahoo! Mail
I Like the New Yahoo! (Score:3, Informative)
IMAP (Score:2)
I do not really understand why they do not offer this service which is really handy when you use several computers or operating systems. GMail chose to stick to a strange implementation of POP3 where the mail you sent comes back to you through POP.
I guess not everybody has the use of an IMAP server, but until then I will continue to use other freemail services.
Problem attaching files with yahoo mail beta (Score:2)
Yahoo! Mail/Oddpost (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, Yahoo! Mail Beta is a (slightly) reworked version of Oddpost [wikipedia.org], which was doing its AJAXy goodness years before Gmail existed. Yahoo! bought Oddpost about three months after Gmail appeared (April 1 vs. July 9, 2004), which may have been a competitive response to gmail, but probably was already in the works. Very early Gmail really only had a few "killer" features, the big one being lots of space (1 gig), which all the major webmail providers matched within a few months (Yahoo! initially went to 100M from 10M, and then quickly moved to 1G). Considering that most people couldn't get a gmail account for months or years, this wasn't exactly an existential threat.
Even the original Yahoo! Mail was a purchased product (Rocketmail [wikipedia.org] by Four11), but it really was an innovation for the day (March 1997). The purchased Oddpost product was also a true innovation (it pretty much was the first major AJAX application that was widely deployed - and isn't AJAX the Slashdot Subject of the Year?).
Getting to the substance of the "review" - yes, the ads are a bit obnoxious on free Yahoo! accounts. But in order to get his vaunted 20% ratio, the reviewer had to come up with a very specific and somewhat narrow screen resolution (828x588 pixels). The Yahoo! Mail Folder Pane is a fixed size (200 pixels) and has four, two-line ads. The ad pane (which only exists on the free accounts) is 160 pixels. The center pane (tabs, mail folder, preview page) automatically resizes to take up the rest of the page. At my normal viewing size (1200x800), the ads take up about 14% of the space - and considering I use Adblock Plus, it's really just some blank space over on the right.
The Contact list stuff is even more silly. Yahoo! Mail will automatically add anyone you've ever sent mail to to your Contact list if you want, or ask for confirmation before doing so. Every email you read that came from someone you've never sent an email to has an "add to contacts" button next to the "From:" address (it's a little folder icon with a plus sign). What more exactly do you want? I, for one, don't want anyone who has ever sent an email to me to be a "contact" - that would clutter up my contacts. The GUI for handling contacts, adding them to lists, adding more information about them and the like is much slicker and better integrated than the equivalent Gmail version.
The "ad" for Yahoo! Calendar on the bottom isn't an ad at all - it's a single line that lists your next 3-4 calendar items. It's rather new (it only appeared about a week ago or so) and gives you a nice GUI for scanning upcoming calendar items and quickly adding a new one. Yahoo! was (rightly) being hammered for not upgrading its Calendar to the same AJAXy-goodness of the beta email, so again, what's the harm? Apparently, they need to add a "turn this off" button or right-click menu option to satisfy the reviewer. Sure, that'd be nice but it's not something I'm worrying about one week into the new functionality.
And that's the "review of the review". What the reviewer leaves out is all the really great features of Yahoo! Mail. It does just about everything the way a standalone mail client does - slick GUI, drag-and-drop, a multi-tabbed interface integrated into the client, message searching (results go into their own tab) and a whole bunch more. In my experience, the spam filter has been a lot better than gmail's.
I like both mail systems, but for average users, Yahoo!'s is a whole lot more natural and useful. I'd love to see message threading in Yahoo! and a slicker GUI in gmail.
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a) It was simply WAY too slow, on a cable modem
b) Yes, I had the same problems with the arrangement/visual look at 1024x768. Hotmail's new interface has this same problem.
c) Too many elements constantly loading, loading, loading. I had to turn off my navigation sound, because it was driving me insane.
d) new mail notification didn't happen until I reload the inbox folder
There were other reasons, but these are the ones that I see s
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On my primary account there,
Someone who hated yahoo mail (Score:3, Informative)
Alpha, Beta, Gamma (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been using the Alpha/Beta/Gamma symbols behind the major.minor version since I've been programming (and thats now over 13 years). Like v0.1a was very early stage, 0.9b was almost a version. At a certain time I even went from A till R ; just because the updates were too minor but too important to be left out of my products at that time; since lots of programs were doors written for Remote Access and Proboard.
Yahoo is to my opinion using the beta tag with all respect ; just as you should respect the beta-tag which means all bugs and glitches will be ironed out in later versions.
Too bad they don't keep version files around so you can see the around-the-clock work of programming such new application towards their millions of subscribers. I don't use Yahoo mail; I don't know what even changed since their last interface; but Beta still means "Beta - in test - to be fixed - with trial and error".
The history of Yahoo's new mail client (Score:3, Informative)
The new Yahoo mail is based upon Oddpost, which was among the first "rich client" web applications developed. It's a rags to riches story, because the pair of guys who developed (Ethan Diamond now product director for Yahoo! Mail at Yahoo! and Iain Lamb) worked through the night at SF coffeeshops because they didn't have an office. Their early program was IE-centric and refused to run on any other browser, but this wasn't a severe limitation for many home users (although it caused me frustration at work). The software generated quite a bit of interest in the press, although at the time (early 2000s) they advertised it as offering only 50MB of storage (amusingly enough, there was nothing built into the program to check -- you could pack your mailbox insanely full).
The company stood out because their app looked like a "real" desktop app at a time when Hotmail was the ultimate web-based mail experience for most people. In the end, they leased a funky little office and managed to get funding to help the company grow. Their business model was simple (and probably not that effective) -- they sold low-cost annual subscriptions to individual users and offered a more expensive corporate package for companies that wanted to deploy the software on their own servers.
Many early users were saddened when their development seemed to go "dark" -- no more site updates, no more quirky news announcements. Many were certain that they were on the verge of closing down when a press release came out late on a Friday afternoon announcing that they'd been purchased by Yahoo! for a rumored $28m. It took a couple of years of hard work, but "Oddpost 2.0" has morphed into a much better email system than Yahoo! formerly had. It's definitely slanted at the casual user who's familiar with MS Outlook, but that's not such a bad thing. My biggest gripe is the non-standard shortcuts. Still, this is a fantastic rags to riches success story.
Surprised no one has mentioned the BSD License.... (Score:2, Informative)
I've not spent much time playing with it, but it looks like an interesting collection of code.
Why I use yahoo email (Score:2)
Google may have changed, but now it's not worth changing accounts. Yahoo is adequate, there is not *that* big a difference.
Comparing apples and oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
It's two different paradigms and they're really not strictly comparable. For people who are more tech-savvy who are used to dealing with Pine on a Unix terminal or for those who are highly utilitarian, Gmail is great. For those who have been brought up on years of Outlook Express and are used to drag and drop, Yahoo! is great. More than anything, what someone thinks about the new Yahoo! mail really depends on that person's preferences and set of experiences.
On that note, here is my personal opinion: I love Pine and I love Gmail.
New Yahoo client is great! (Score:2)
I wouldn't personally switch, mostly since I don't use "free" email anymore. But I have recommended other people to at least try it before opening yet another gmail account.
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I can't even see it! (Score:2)
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No, thanks.
It lacks IMAP option for paid users I agree but they have a reason for it. It seems like they need a huge mainframe farm to handle that many users which are connected 24/7 over IMAP.
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The free "Yahoo delivers" POP3 access is only available in some co
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Yes.
Does the blog provide good information and sufficient media (i.e. pictures)?
Yes.
Should Slashdot wait/hope for another source like an official news paper to bring up this story instead of delivering the news as fast as possible?
Possibly, but not in this case.
delivering the news as fast as possible? (Score:2)
Except this is not in any way news, fast or not. It's one person's blog, which, if you look at any of the other blog entries, are nothing more than a series of opinions of many different, unrelated things.
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Like in the matrix
"Tell me, Mr Anderson... what good is a phone call if you're unable to speak?"
I got a similar picture of Neo having his mouth closed only this time with a chain and ball around his feet
"Tell me, Mr Anderson... what good is your interface if you're unable to send?"
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But do they reward you for doing the opposite, like gmail does?