Google Mail vs Yahoo! Mail

[Mike]

I have been an avid and loyal user of Yahoo! mail for about 9 years now but I have discovered that they do not support imap accounts for their users whilst Google Mail does. This is a big thing for me being able to use my email more effectively on the new computer at home so I thought I would check it out. Here are my comparative thoughts.

Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo has the following PROS!
- Easy to use,
- Very nice and slick user interface
- Contacts have a nice level of detail and are easy to manage
- 100% up time during my 9 years of usage which has got to be a major plus.
- Very large storage

The following CONS!
- No imap to sync emails from computer to web
- Group emailing seems to be a big bug at the moment
- Until recently no 'contact us' in the Classic interface

Google Mail
PROS!
- Imap
- Very large storage
- Easy and powerful search engine

CONS!
- More like the 'Classic' Yahoo! Which is a bit painful after being used to the slickness of Yahoo!
- More gimics, photos of your mates etc. Yawn.

These are just first impressions but I would give the following ratings
Looks:
Yahoo!
Google Mail

Useability
Yahoo!
Google

Features
Yahoo!
Google

Anyone else tried this one out before? What are your thoughts?

[mr_e]

Having not used Google Mail, I can't really comment. What problems were you having with Yahoo! and group emailing? IMAP only seems to be useful if you're accessing email from a couple of different computers, or does it have any other uses? Slightly question-tastic there, sorry.

[Mike]

Well, like I said above, I am only in the testing phase yet. I will try the imap with the computer at home and see if I like how it works. If it works well I will post further and let you know. To be honest, I work on about three computers as a general rule and it would be nice to have some of my important emails archived on my computer at home. I have become a bit dependent on Yahoo! mail and I don't know if that is a good thing. For example - somewhere I have the passwords for my openzone account - can I find it?! NO! very frustrating.

[johnriley1uk]

somewhere I have the passwords for my openzone account - can I find it?! NO! very frustrating.

Very frustrating! How can you loan me the use of this when I go on holiday if you don't have the password....

Just think of all my Internet Withdrawal Symptoms, sometimes as much as 7 days with no connection. Dreadful, quite dreadful....

Can't you request a new password?

:? :?

[BarcelonAl]

I have a Google Mail account used for if I need to store large files somewhere easily accessible. It's ok, but their spam and junk mail filters leave a lot to be desired, nowhere near as good as Yahoo.