Tuesday, April 6, 2004

Yahoo Rules

Why Yahoo Mail Rules:



- Integrated into my homepage along with all my other links and information that I use

- Same interface available worldwide

- It automatically scans all attachments and downloads for viruses without having to purchase or download additional software and updates to every box that you own or will use.

- Will be my address for the rest of my life regardless of who my ISP is

- FREE (as in beer)

- Very, very little spam makes it into my inbox

- No software running on your machine

- Impervious to simple buffer overflow hacks and attacks

- No software to update ever

- OS independence!!!

- Address book is not on your local machine and therefore if your machine is compromised it will not spread to everyone you know

- Much less obtrusive advertising than other free email providers (mail.com)

- Not owned by a predatory monopolist (hotmail.com)

- It just works! You don't have to know anything about computers. Isn't that what everyone really wants out of a tool (mac)?



Why Yahoo Mail Sucks:



- It might be a bit slower than other locally run email programs especially if you are trying to access your email through a low bandwidth connection.

- There are potentially more privacy concerns with storing all your email on a remote server. However a novice or even intermediate computer user will probably leave themselves more open to privacy concerns than having them stored on yahoo's servers

- They are not saints and you still have to watch out for changes in there User Agreements. Like humans every company has the potential for great acts of evil and great acts of goodness. No company is always one or the other (except for Microsoft).

- Formatting of the messages is more limited



For my personal use I find that the positives far outweigh the negatives. I am almost always on a broadband connection so execution speed is not a problem for me. The limited formatting does not bother me. In fact I am a big fan of straight text emails as opposed to HTML emails. It’s a big waste of space if you ask me. Include the URL in the text if you must have some HTML. I am already running a browser so it will take me less time to click on a link than to have browser software running in addition to my email client. Those are my thoughts on Yahoo Mail.