Killing Outlook: With Yahoo! Mail (beta) − 1 January, 2007
Yahoo Mail. Yahoo Mail. Why Yahoo Mail? The simple answer is that I have been a Yahoo! guy since 'nam. While today I am less reluctant than ever to switch over to gmail, at that time I really liked the new Yahoo Mail beta. It works a lot like an application - I can drag and drop my messages from my in-box to folders and it has nice ajaxy ways of creating contacts, searching my mail, and adding calendar entries. At the same time I liked it then for the same reason I like it today - it feels familiar. I tried gmail (and I still send vital mail to my gmail account from time to time) but I could never really get the hang of using tags instead of folders to organize my mail. Still though, some missing features in Yahoo Mail have me considering migrating all of my stuff over to gmail soon. iCal support is non-existent in Yahoo Mail. And the reminders for my calendar are perpetually late. I had a tech support call with Yahoo recently to try to get that to work. They have two different places you can update your timezone (once in your general Yahoo preferences and once in your Mail preferences. Neither of them seems to be working for me though. Ugh.). No matter how dilligent I am about keeping my calendar up-to-date (which is essential for a guy like me) I will never get reminders when I need them. Instead, I have to rely on checking in with my calendar two or three times a day to make sure I'm on top of things. This has resulted in my missing more calls and meetings over the past three months than I care to admit. I hate being a flake. When I commit to something, I have every intention of following through. While I may be able to blame technology for my flakiness lately, I really only have myself to blame for not knowing the pitfalls of my resolution. Yahoo, help me!
