Yahoo! Mail has been my favorite email service since many years. The web based version of Yahoo mail is quite intuitive, and well thought of. And the only reason I use Gmail as well is because free version of Yahoo mail does not provides POP access. Nevertheless, I still use Yahoo! mail for my personal email.
And now Yahoo has launched a beta version of Yahoo! mail that makes it even better.
Here are some of the new features in beta version of Yahoo! mail:
- The interface is refreshingly better. I already loved the interface of Yahoo mail, as it lets me open multiple emails in tabs, and use keyboard shortcuts (including some of the same shortcuts that Outlook supports). This new interface is even better, and I absolutely love it.
- It is even faster now. Yahoo! claims that the mail will be up to 2x faster now, and I agree. The speed improvement is noticeable.
- Yahoo mail now comes with unlimited storage space. You can store all your photos and documents in it without worrying about running out of space. I hope someone creates a client like GSpace for Yahoo mail too :)
- It comes with a tab called “Updates”. You can see updates from Twitter, Facebook, and Yahoo in this. You can even update your status on Facebook and Twitter from this tab.
- It is even easier now to add new contacts to contact list.
- The spam protection has been improved even further. Though, I have been seeing some spam in Yahoo mail lately that seems to be missed by Spam filter. I am hoping this new spam protection will take care of that.
You can read more about features of new version here.
Yahoo has done a pretty good job at linking all the services within a webmail client. If you use it properly, this would mean that one from one web interface you can check your email, chat with your friends, check feeds of social networks, and more. This is more so a reason to check Gmail in Yahoo mail.
There are two features that I would have loved to see in this new Yahoo mail: free access to POP, and a free competitor to Google apps. For POP, I am ok with using Zimbra Desktop for time being (that natively supports POP in free Yahoo mail).
If you are already using Yahoo! Mail, you would see a notification about Yahoo Mail beta when you login to Yahoo Mail (Though, I am not sure if it has been rolled out globally yet). Give it a try, and let us know what you think.
