I have been using yahoo email since about 3 years from now and I m very happy to still use it. I started using Internet in about 2000 and registered my account in two websites offering free emails. One was Hotmail and other was Yahoo (Emails were a major reason then but the other advantage of registering at these two sites were the only ones that provided messenger services at that time (except AOL)). I am still using both of them but I feel Yahoo is better than Hotmail, Rediff, Indiatimes etc.
Advantages of Yahoo e-mail:
=> 4 MB of free storage space. Hotmail offers 2 MB. So u get more storage space. Of course Rediff and Indiatimes have the upper hand here by providing 5 MB of storage space but they lose out on other points.
=>Speed of downloading e-mails in yahoo is much faster then most of other email service providers. Agreed rediff and Indiatimes are faster then Yahoo but then many times I found out rediff not as fast as it is every other time. And for Indiatimes well whenever I log in I get the welcome page: Indiatimes mail is undergoing maintenance and will be unavailable for so and so time. So I feel Yahoo gains an advantage here. And for Hotmail; well it’s the slowest.
=> Nowadays for further enhancements sites like Hotmail, Rediff provide current news, advertisements and other stuff and give a link to go to inbox. In my opinion it is unnecessary. Yea sometimes when u r bored and u have nothing to do then its ok that u might click on some of the news and current stories. But in day to day life in brevity of time u get a more page to with a link on to go inbox becomes much annoying. And Hotmail as it is slow and with these advancements it has become more slow lol. Thank god yahoo doesn’t have such links on my Inbox.
=>Spam mails are much less in Yahoo compared to other services.
=>One thing which I have found out using Yahoo is that it is more secure and private. Not in terms of offering antivirus services but for the following reason: Suppose u have some personal e-mails which u don’t want others to read it. Well if u r using a personal computer then its fine. But suppose u r using a shared computer then anyone can see those mails offline. But with yahoo when u try going offline and opening ur Inbox it shows its login page only. That means u click on any link still u will find only Yahoo’s login page so that no-one can see ur personal emails. That is really advantageous in a shared user environment.
=>Coming to mailbox well only Yahoo offers different colour schemes to customize ur inbox. U can choose from many of the pre-defined colour schemes and define ur Inbox colors according to ur choice.
=>The links are well organized so for a newbie it won’t be any problem to get accustomed too.
=>One more advantage Yahoo gives is the size. Even though it provides 4 MB storage but many times my account has overflowed with emails. With other e-mail service providers as soon as ur Quota is reached u stop receiving emails. Of course u get a warning e-mail from that particular service provider but u won’t get emails now. With Yahoo when my account was over quota I continued to receive emails and the limit said u r using 116% of ur allotted limit. My account was overflowed but still I got some % of e-mails over my prescribed quota.
=>General settings like how much mails u want to see listed on one page in ascending or descending order of date, vacation reply, customizable signature etc are the other features that this site provides.
=>If u r sending an e-mail and forget to put on the subject or if u r trying to send an empty message then u get alerts about them (which u can put off if u want too).
=>I also feel that text formatting options that are offered are better than other e-mail service providers.
Now some disadvantages:
=>Yahoo as it says offers high level of spam protection becoz of which many of emails are treated as spam and they r sent to the bulk mail folder. Even some of the alerts mouthshut are sent to bulk mail. So if u empty the bulk mail folder urself or after one month when yahoo automatically empties them after a month then some of important e-mails would be lost.
=>It takes more time to attach files with in e-mails. Of course it may depend on the internet speed and scanning with Norton Antivirus (another slow piece) but generally I found the speed of attachment is slow.
=>Inserting addresses is much easier in Hotmail. This is becoz just next to the compose block in Hotmail u have the address list. U just need to click on the contact name and the email address will be added directly into the send to block. While in yahoo if u click on the address book a separate web page pop-ups and with people like me using software’s preventing pop-ups cause problems many times because I then have to press the specific key to allow this pop-up.
=>One another disadvantage of Yahoo mail is that suppose if the person to whom u have sent the email has his account full then u don’t receive immediately that the mail has been bounced back. U get an e-mail sometime later which states the problem while in hotmail while sending the email itself a pop-up box appears stating that the person’s mailbox is full and the email can’t be sent.
Alrite so this concludes my rvu on Yahoo e-mail. Comments and suggestions to improve my rvu are always welcome.