Permagnus.com

Yup, I know that Yahoo! Mail Beta is pretty much an old story but until this date, the use of it isn’t as widespread as Gmail (although both of it is using the word “beta” as their webware versioning), and I strongly believe that this new service has slipped under the radar of the-average-joe.

The first look of the new interface is… uhm… very web 2.0 (potato potahto). It’s heavily based on AJAX but not the light-weight AJAX like Gmail has. The interface seems very neat and uncluttered (unlike Gmail under heavy use). However, this neatness has a drawback which tends to slow down a system. The test computer I’m using currently is using an AMD Athlon 2600XP with 512 MB with minimal background program running (AVG and ZoneAlarm to be exact) and it still feels heavy.

The bright side is, despite the system clogging and all, it’s really fast in term of connection speed. I have been using it for several days now and the service provided me with the standard that you expect to find in a big and established company such as Yahoo!. All in all, the stability of the service (in term of web usage) is far superior than that of Gmail.

Yahoo still uses the old filtering system in which email that caught the filter goes to the folder that you specify. This is of course a plus for people who are used to folder system and a minus for people that already used to label system brought on by Gmail.

The rest of the features are pretty standard, something that you will find in any web-based email client such as Hotmail or Gmail. The plus side of the AJAX implementation is the usage of tab and the ability to drag and drop. For example, you can reposition your tab position by drag-and-drop (which is pretty neat).

One of the most annoying thing about Yahoo Mail Beta (and also the one that spoiled all the neatness) is the humongous ads.

Not only that, you will also encounter ads while you are waiting for your email sent confirmation (which is pretty… well… annoying).

So in the end, considering my heavy usage of free-web-email system for mailing list purposes, will I start using Yahoo Mail Beta for everyday use or should I just stick with my Gmail account? For now, I’ll just stick with my Gmail account simply because the moving cost between those two accounts are just unbearable (especially the time). And since I’m joining mailing list mainly for leisure purposes and no business meaning, I don’t need Yahoo’s scalability (just yet).

For those of you who are indeed looking for a free solution for a great email service, try to find a Yahoo Mail Beta invitation ;-)