Neat little box of tricks (yahoo.co.uk)

Member Name: dave27

Product:	yahoo.co.uk
Date:	29/07/04 (830 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Grrrreat

Disadvantages: Doesn't work with OE

Gott im himmel ? when the hell (note interesting interplay heaven/hell, coincidental rather than planned ? note to self: going a bit schizoid) exactly did e-mail become so completely indispensable? These days even the banks are demanding that you provide an e-mail address when you open an account, the staid old fruits!

Now, being a tite old git as you may have remarked from previous correspondence, dave27 had abso blooming lutely no intention of paying for the privilege of having an e-mail account, despite how vital they are. Of course, you have to balance that against the fact that most free e-mail services these days are getting just that little bit ropey and there is an argument for paying at least something to ensure you have a reliable home for your cyber correspondence.

I actually have a plethora of e-mail addresses ? the standard Hotmail account, one at SoftHome, another at AOL, several associated with the websites I run and another at Operamail, but the other day I chose to reactivate the one I?d had for a number of years at Yahoo. I had used my Yahoo address when I?d signed up for a particular Internet service some time before and needed to use it again, so I had to go into Yahoo and ask them to make my Inbox live again, which was relatively easy to do, and I then recalled exactly what is good about the Yahoo service.

One of the most significant advantages of Yahoo is its longevity ? it has really stood the test of time and outlived all the other bandwagon jumpers which have come and gone and still offers an excellent service, in a whole range of guises.

The free option, which is the one I have (and I have no intention of paying for the privilege) offers 100Mb (up from 4Mb) of storage space (which is quite enough for me and anyone so long as they keep an eye on their account and clear out anythin
g that?s no longer needed or even save it to your hard disk. The limit on individual message size has also been increased recently ? from 3Mb to 10Mb, and these changes certainly make Yahoo a much more attractive option these days, as does the reliability.

Upgrading to Yahoo Mail Plus ($19.99 or about £12 a year) increases your storage space to 2Gb, and you really can?t tell me that you need that much.

Of course, the free version means you?re stuck with the usual Yahoo etc ads, but that?s a small price to pay, especially as you soon become accustomed to ignoring them ? makes you look like a skinflint, but who cares?

There?s also spam protection (termed SpamGuard by Yahoo), filters, address blocking, address book, the ability to set up new folders, signature and vacation response, and even the facility to receive other POP account e-mails via your Yahoo account (although I prefer to just use Outlook Express to do so, as it always feels much more flexible and easy to control than ANY of the other options).

I have to say that in my humble opinion I?m not sure that Yahoo has an awful lot going for it over and above Hotmail in terms of functionality, but would caution you that my Hotmail account has always been MUCH more prone to Spam attacks than Yahoo ? I?m not sure why that should be the case, but it seems to be the general experience, and I can vouch for the facts.

However, Yahoo is simple, clean and efficient and very helpfully. It?s designed well and has a nice interface, and I love it for all of those things. Hotmail always smacks a little of tack and tat and makes me feel a little bit unclean for some strange, imperceptible reason. But then that?s just me?

Of course, the presence of Yahoo groups and some of the other features tha
t the site offers, and the sheer overwhelming dominance of Microsoft will always combine to make me favour Yahoo, but there?s more than principle at work here. Yahoo Mail is an extremely fine service that is reliability itself.

I?ve never had any problems with my Yahoo address, while Hotmail has always been that little bit flakey and unpleasant, and is far too prone to collecting spam.

Indeed, if I could just collect Yahoo mail via Outlook Express it would quite likely be the perfect e-mail account.

Joining up is extremely easy. If you toddle over to either http://uk.yahoo.com/ or http://www.yahoo.com they?ll welcome you in with open arms, and it?s a pretty quick process. You can get an address that?s either @yahoo.com or @yahoo.co.uk, or even set up multiple addresses, and for some strange reason Yahoo is much more welcome at other sites than Hotmail.

There?s a code verification process when you sign up for your account to discourage the nastier phantom phlan phlingers, but I?m not sure what difference that makes. Stiil it does give the placebo effect of making you feel that these guys actually care about you.

I?ve found that response time via Yahoo is as quick as most other free accounts and certainly I?ve never been let down so far.


Hmmm, that seems to be all there is to say on the subject. And that?s not really a criticism. The best things in life all seem to revolve around simplicity and Yahoo Mail shares that feature. Quick, simple and effective, I recommend this service.



Other fawning yelps of admiration about Yahoo?, from another time, another place



Life on the Internet is usually measured in terms of weeks rather than months or, even more rarely, years, so any program or enterprise which can last several sets of twelve months ha
s to have something good going for it. In fact there is one service which has to my certain knowledge lasted some four or five years at least. Ladies and gentlemen, therefore, I give you the Eighth Wonder of the World, PREEEESENT ING-AH! Yahoo....

Let me just kick off by saying that Yahoo is an absolutely splendid service, well run and reliable with some high quality and best of breed offerings. As a general Internet jack of all trades it has few equals and some of the parts of its service offering deserve the term peerless (not meaning that it's wooden bridge has collapsed, but rather that it has no equals)...


Many people will immediately associate Yahoo with search engines. Some may even recognise it for its exceptional e-mail facility. But in reality, Yahoo is something a great deal more and a darn sight bigger than those two services, although they are both certainly extremely impressive facilities.

As well as a search engine and e-mail provider, Yahoo also offers templated web page hosting, instant messaging, classified ads, chat rooms, clubs, calendars, webrings, faxes, etc. Apologies if I've left any services out, but I guess you start to get the picture ... this is one enormous helluva services website and it's nice in this day and age to get something as good and reliable as this and it need never cost you a single bloody penny.

If you want to check it out for yourself, then hop along to either www.yahoo.com or www.yahoo.co.uk for the Anglicised deal...

It's a lovely, well designed site with a logical and easy to follow interface and navigation system and a dream to use.

You'll need to sign up with Yahoo to get at the majority of the services and need to choose a unique username and password, but it takes only a matter
of moments to do so. It's a bit difficult to see how to sign up at first, but if you click on the 'Calendar' or 'Check Email' links, they encourage you to "Sign up now". Your e-mail address will be username@yahoo.co.uk (in this country) and the site will also require security info such as Birthday and a security question which you can select from a drop down list. Disconcertingly you also get asked all the standard marketing info like interests and occupation, but that's pretty standard for anything, especially free services these days, and on Yahoo at least it's optional. If the username has already been chosen, the site will prompt you for an alternative. There are a lot of Yahoo users out there so be prepared to have to be quite creative about your address.

With the e-mail service you get 6Mb of space and the obligatory welcoming e-mail sent to your Inbox. You can set up alternative folders to go with the almost standard Inbox, Draft, Sent and Trash folders. The e-mails sent take less than a minute to be received at the other end under normal circumstances (you guessed it, I checked) and a similar time for mails to be received at your Yahoo address. The outgoing mails will contain the normal Yahoo ad, but again that's a very cheap price to have to pay.

You also get an impressive Address Book with services such as "Find a listing from Yahoo Yellow Pages and automatically add it to your Address Book" and really they've done a remarkable job all round with this little piece of excellence.

Be warned, however, if you haven't used your e-mail account for four months it will be closed down and all your mail bounced. You can reactivate it later if you want, but you need to use it to keep it. My own problem is having too many different e-mai
l addresses, and I'm afraid I don't use the Yahoo e-mail account at all, despite its obvious qualities.

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