Mail Anywhere. Review on YahooMail

I have used Yahoo! Mail since Geocities merged with Yahoo! a couple of years ago before that I had always used Hotmail (although after finding Yahoo! I have stopped using that account because there is far more spam on Hotmail than on Yahoo! from what I have experienced).

The great thing about Yahoo! Mail is that it can stay with you for years even if you change ISP's (which I am sure we have all had to). You can get your mail from any computer in the world no matter where you go, which makes it very simple.

There are a few bad points that I have found with Yahoo!

Mail but the convenience makes up for these downfalls:

<B>Downfalls</B>

<I>Spam</I> - Even though I get less here than I did on Hotmail, I still get an average of 3 to 4 e-mails a day that I delete instantly.

<I>Ads</I> - Yes there are ads everywhere. They have them on every page if you use webmail and if you send mail out from their webmail there is an ad for Yahoo on the bottom of the e-mail.

<I>Slow</I> - Yes, somedays even though other pages are functioning normally Yahoo! Mail will still be slow because of how many people use their services.

<I>User Names</I> - The other bad thing is that sometimes you will have to ad numbers to your username because they have so many members. I have not seen them delete inactive accounts so some names are not being used but since they were registered by someone else they are still not available.

<B>Features</B>

There are many features that make all of these little things not even matter to me.

<I>Vacation Replies</I> - If your going on vacation this is a good way to let everyone know why you might not be getting back to them for a while. Be warned though that if you are on a lot of mailing lists this could get annoying to the list owner and you might get removed from the list so you might want to have these forwarded to another address or not use this feature.

<I>E-mail Notification</I> - If you have Yahoo! Companion or Yahoo! Messenger then you can have them both tell you that you have new mail without having to log-in every few minutes to see if you have new mail.

<I>SpamGuard</I> - Sick of all that Spam? Well this will help a little bit but you still might get some that slip through the cracks.

<I>Storing Your Mail</I> - You also get 6 MB's of storage space for your mail so you can save your mail if you want to refer back to it. If you find that you need more space than that you can buy 25MB's for only $19.99 a year.

<I>Virus Scanning</I> - For the safety of your computer this is always a good option.

<I>Block Senders</I> - If you want to get rid of annoying e-mails that are not blocked already you can ad the senders name to your Blocked Senders list and their mail will be deleted before you even see it.

<I>Forwarding and POP Access</I> - This will allow you to either send your mail to another address or allows you to get your mail from any e-mail client that you prefer. I find that this is a lot easier than having to remember to go check my Yahoo! Mail at the site (plus there are fewer ads although you do have to sign up to get their mailer to do this but that's only 1 e-mail every day or so).

<I>Address Book</I> - Another great feature. The best part about this is that no matter where you travel you will have all the addresses that you need in front of you. You can also import your latest address book from your e-mail client so you will have an updated list as you travel.

<I>Customization</I> - You can also customize the colors of the interface so that you will see a page that is perfect for you every time that you log-in.

<B>Tested their Speed</B>

Yes, I did test the speed of their service by sending myself a message from my Yahoo! account to my ISP e-mail account and the mail got to my account with 30 seconds which was very good speed. When I tested the other way I was able to get mail from my ISP account to my Yahoo! account with the same amount of time.

<B>Conclusion</B>

If you travel a lot of want a stable address that you can have for years this is a good one for you to try. Yahoo! Mail is very simple to use and for me it has been very dependable.