Yahoo Email: The Pros & Cons Compared To Other Email Programs
I've had a Yahoo email account since 1997, and for the most part I've been very happy with it.
There are some features on the new version that I'm not as happy with, however. For example, whenever you login to your email account now, it automatically opens up a chat room tab for everyone in your Contact List who happens to be online at the moment. I have a lot of people in my contact list, and this can be really annoying, and even slow down the program.
Fortunately, Yahoo allows you keep the Yahoo Classic version if you want to. In the past you just had to accept whatever changes they had made to their newest version. But apparently, with this newer version, I wasn't the only one that wasn't as enamoured with it.
Here are the advantages and disadvantages of using Yahoo email, as I see it...
Great Things About Yahoo Email
#1 You get unlimited storage with Yahoo Email.
Unlimited storage is one of my favorite features with Yahoo. Compare this with other email programs such as Gmail (which only gives you 7329 MB of mail storage) and Hotmail (which gives you 5GB of email storage).
Now there is a catch with Yahoo... if they believe you are abusing their service, your account can be flagged by their anti-abuse office. However, I've never had that problem in 10 years of using Yahoo Email. I think you'd have to really mess up to have this happen -- like not checking your e-mail for months at a time and clearing it out, that sort of thing.
The reason: you can save your emails online and not on your desktop where they would take up space on your hard drive.
Anyone that is trying to conserve space on their hard drive would be better served by using a Yahoo Email account than one of these offline desktop applications, in my opinion.
#3 Yahoo Chat is available without downloading Yahoo Messenger.
That's right, if you don't want to download Yahoo Messenger, one nice thing about the new version of Yahoo Email (and which they are supposed to make available even on Classic Yahoo Email) is the chat function.
While I personally found it extremely annoying, it is nice that you don't have to download an application to chat with your yahoo messenger buddies anymore. Again, this saves space on your hard drive.
#4 Yahoo Email has a very nice calendar feature.
I really like Yahoo's calendar and I use it to keep track of my writing deadlines.
Also, you can set the calendar up to send you e-mail reminders about events that you have scheduled on your calendar. This is very useful and means you don't have to worry so much about forgetting deadlines.
#5 Yahoo Email has a notepad feature which I also really like.
I use Yahoo's Notepad when I'm researching online.
When you click on the Notepad tab, you can open a new note or edit your existing notes.
You can use Yahoo Notepad to take notes or copy and paste sections of text from different web pages to use in your research, for example. Notepad also allows you to set up folders to organize all of your notes.
#6 Yahoo Email uses Norton Virus Scan to scan all your emails before you can read them.
It scans quickly, and ultimately protects you from getting a virus which can then attack your computer.
In my opinion, this is one of the best things about Yahoo Email because I don't have to worry about downloading an email with a virus that is then going to mess up my computer.
When you are using an e-mail application like Outlook Express for example, you have to be sure you have some kind of anti-virus software on your computer. And even then, an e-mail with a virus has been known to slip through.
#7 Yahoo's Stationery options are a nice bonus.
With Yahoo's Stationery option, you can choose to use to dress up your emails. Along these same lines, Yahoo Email also has emoticons built in, plus the ability to change the color, size and font of your text, the ability to use bullets, change the alignment of any line, and highlight any word or line of text.
All these features make Yahoo E-mail fun to use!
Not So Great Things About Yahoo Email
#1 You cannot use POP with a free Yahoo Email account.
This can be unfortunate, as many people want to be able to download their email to Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express on their desktops.
If you are one of those people, then Yahoo Email probably isn't for you. That is, unless you don't have a problem paying a fee for web based e-mail to have this capability.
#2 There are a ton of ads on Yahoo Email.
This is especially true with the new improved version.
That's another reason that I've stuck with Yahoo Classic Mail, because there is only one ad banner at the top, plus one at the top and bottom of the bar on the left. That's it.
In the new version, ads appear everywhere making the page look so busy that you can barely tell where your email starts or ends.
Summary
All in all, the advantages of using Yahoo Email clearly outweigh the disadvantages in my opinion.
I'm certainly willing to put up with a few ads (and even the Chat Rooms for every person in my address book who is online), if it means I get to keep using Yahoo Email for free. After all, if I really don't want these 2 things to annoy me, I can just switch to Yahoo Classic Mail instead, and that solves the problem.
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