♥♥Gone to pastures new. Thanks to all of you. You are a lovely crowd, but time does not ...
♥♥Gone to pastures new. Thanks to all of you. You are a lovely crowd, but time does not permit me to do the site justice any more♥♥
Member since:01.08.2003
Reviews:633
Members who trust:492
Recently, I found that my email provider was getting bombarded with viruses and that the service was not a viable proposition any more, taking into account that as soon as Outlook Express went in to retrieve mail, error messages would appear, or Norton would jump into action. I have more than 2 dozen items in quarantine in Norton and am uncomfortable about it, and decided that it was time I did something to rectify the situation.
I have tried email with hotmail and found them adequate, although sometimes, I have had trouble getting onto the site. I suppose the inevitable overload of popularity will slow down an email provider, plus the fact that the filters on email on hotmail were a little too strict and I was finding my friends emails hidden away in my junk folder quite frequently.
I
searched the net for alternatives, and although up until now, I have preferred to use pop servers, I really have my doubts now with all the spam and viruses that are about, and so I decided that I would try yahoo.
SIGNING UP
Signing up is relatively simple. I liked the fact that Yahoo offer you more space than most free providers. 4MB of space is available for free accounts and this is more than enough to suit my needs. The spam protection is great as well as I will explain later, and their virus checking seems to do the business.
The questions that they ask you on signing up to Yahoo Mail are not intrusive, although some are a little superfluous, such as profession and level of that profession. Seems a little pointless to ask you if you are a Managing Director. What difference can it make.
You are asked a security question which is good as it means from time to time Yahoo can question you when accessing your account, to ensure that it is really you that is entering that private space where your email is stored.
Once you have set up an account, you have instant access to that account which is great. No waste of time.
THE ACCOUNT ITSELF
When you type in Yahoo Mail into your internet browser, this takes you to the sign in page, where you simply add the Yahoo name that you chose and your password, and are quickly taken into your inbox.
There is a bar at the top of your inbox that tells you how much space you have so far used which is helpful.
Your incoming emails are hilighted and you can chose from the opening screen which of these are spam, press the curser against one of the emails to open it, or if you know that it is spam, simply press the spam button and yahoo will stop the sender getting into your email box again which is a nice feature.
GETTING THE MOST OF YAHOO MAIL
There is a section where you can go to put all your email addresses safely in one place. Here, they have thought of everything, and you can synchronise your outlook express and yahoo mail in such a way that all your addresses are imported to the site which is very useful. There is also a means of getting your mail set up from your own PDA which is handy for some although not me.
NOTEPAD
Here Yahoo have created a user friendly area where you can leave little notes of things you want to remember. Adding and deleting them is a painless process and saves you time in the longrun because you have all your notes in the same place.
CALENDAR SECTION
Here you can set up a calendar and receive reminders on things you do not wish to forget, and it is all self explanatory. You can organise a calendar with different themes such as baby animals, nature etc., and its an enjoyable experience.
COLOUR PREFERENCES
Here Yahoo give you the choice of personalising your yahoo experience. I quite like it, and chose pink for my main theme and found that the selection of colours were easy on the eyes.
OVERALL EXPERIENCE
I really like yahoo mail. They do not get you to sign up for other services. Yes, there are other services, but beware because the other services available from yahoo may install the yahoo taskbar on your browser, and this really is an irritating piece of software.
As far as the mail goes, I find them easily accessed, a quick website to use and I enjoy getting safe mail. I think for anyone who is passionate about pop mail and using their Outlook Express, then it may be a viable option to sign on for the pop mail that yahoo offer at $19.79 although for me, with the ever increasing spam on the internet, I chose yahoo as a safe option and will keep it like that for the time being.
I believe that compared with hotmail, the options of different fonts and styles, signatures and emoticoms (i.e. little smileys and things like that), are good and adequate and something that some people may find useful is the spell check which is superb. I never have problems with spelling but checked it out by purposely spelling things wrong, and I found that whilst it is based on American English rather than Queens English, it does an adequate job.
Have a happy yahoo experience. I am. :0)
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nice review. i use hotmail and i am more than content with it. yahoo are good, they operate a pretty steady ship, but i dont need their email services
AnitaM 19.05.2004 22:40
I set up a Yahoo account for all my Ciao alerts and use the address for all sites I sign up to. I have started getting the same virus emails that plagued my NTL account for a while but they go straight into the Bulk folder and then I delete them. I also like the fact you can inform Yahoo what is Spam and what isn't. It sorts the mail really well.
purplelynne 18.05.2004 14:01
great review as always, I'm with hotmail, and it's definitely improved, not sure if it's my broadband connection or improved service. L x