As I said before, I’m in the middle of an experiment with Yahoo! Mail Beta. I’m a little ways into it now, so let me share some initial reactions.
The drag-and-drop Ajax interface that they’ve developed is pretty sweet. In fact, on my XP machine at work, I often forget that I’m in Firefox (thinking that I’m in Outlook), and alt-tab to get to a browser window. That’s a good thing. Unfortunately, that super slick interface appears to be pretty beefy, and there are times when the site hangs up waiting to change folders or refresh the current view. I’d estimate that I have to force a refresh on Yahoo! Beta three to four times a day.
The contact integration is as good as Gmail’s, and they’ve got a very clear way to add new contacts to the database immediately after sending an e-mail to a new contact. In line with that is the compatibility that Yahoo! offers with things like Plaxo, and Outlook via Intellisync. It’s much simpler, with Yahoo!, for me to keep my contacts synchronized – a problem that’s become increasingly difficult to manage.
That being said, I’ve had troubles adding new e-mail accounts lately, and Yahoo! tech support is about as helpful as a wart. I still miss labels, but the folder system on Yahoo! Mail is extremely familiar, thanks to Outlook.
The biggest bump in the road is still the speed. Get that Ajax pumping boys, and we’ll be good to go. Stay tuned..