[st63z]

I still really like Yahoo (compared to the other major portals/webmails) and actually hope they can turn around their downhill financial streak. In fact, I've paid for many of Yahoo's premium services (such as extra email storage, etc). IMHO, in all this time, they've never been as aggresively annoying with their advertising and pop-ups and whatnot compared to many others. Their services have been reliable, easy to get into and use without too many obstructions and complaints. As a bonus, they have been giving away more for their free services compared to the competition (like the aforementioned POP3 access in the past). All in all, Yahoo's services have had the best balance and mix for me (I guess it helps that they're independent as opposed to MS or AOL properties). I dunno, I just like a lot of things about their services and I like their web interface and such...

Hotmail is, like, really limited in space and stuff (total storage, max size per email, etc). Whenever you log into Hotmail it always brings up the annoying MSN Messenger app (I use mainly Yahoo Messenger). I still remember the publicized Hotmail problems and outages and Passport problems...

My 2 cents...

[st63z]

I still really like Yahoo (compared to the other major portals/webmails) and actually hope they can turn around their downhill financial streak. In fact, I've paid for many of Yahoo's premium services (such as extra email storage, etc). IMHO, in all this time, they've never been as aggresively annoying with their advertising and pop-ups and whatnot compared to many others. Their services have been reliable, easy to get into and use without too many obstructions and complaints. As a bonus, they have been giving away more for their free services compared to the competition (like the aforementioned POP3 access in the past). All in all, Yahoo's services have had the best balance and mix for me (I guess it helps that they're independent as opposed to MS or AOL properties). I dunno, I just like a lot of things about their services and I like their web interface and such...

Hotmail is, like, really limited in space and stuff (total storage, max size per email, etc). Whenever you log into Hotmail it always brings up the annoying MSN Messenger app (I use mainly Yahoo Messenger). I still remember the publicized Hotmail problems and outages and Passport problems...

My 2 cents...

[Marc Zimmermann]

Originally Posted by st63z

I still really like Yahoo (compared to the other major portals/webmails) and actually hope they can turn around their downhill financial streak. [...]

Exactly my sentiments. I hope that they're going to find the right balance between free and pay services.

[CoffeeKid]

Those bastards! :evil:

Thanks Ed. I hate this kind of stuff. You know what? It's actually illegal in my province (it's called negative opting - where a company automatically signs you up for something, and forces you to manually sign out from it - Rogers Cable got into heaps of trouble over this a few years ago, and this law was enforced). I wonder if anyone's done anything about it in BC... like complain to the Attorney General... hrmmm.

[James Bond]

Is there any other free webmail that is comparable to yahoo or better? I find yahoo much better than hotmail (the latter gives me so much junk mail that it is unbelievable). Excite is dead, and it was never good. How mail.com any good? I mostly care about 1. fast connection even from modem and 2. least possible spam.

[Mobile Bob]

Thank you!

[helloboys]

Originally Posted by st63z

I still really like Yahoo (compared to the other major portals/webmails) and actually hope they can turn around their downhill financial streak. In fact, I've paid for many of Yahoo's premium services (such as extra email storage, etc). IMHO, in all this time, they've never been as aggresively annoying with their advertising and pop-ups and whatnot compared to many others.

This used to be the case. Yahoo used to pride itself on having minimalistic advertising and design. That's changed over the past year. It's obtrusive (lots of pop ups and unders, full screen ads, interstitals), and this latest move is evidence of that.

I think Y! spread themselves too thin. They bought waaayy too much during their heyday. They havem, what three hosting services now? (GeoCities, Servers and Websites, or something like that). Sounds liek they followed this business plan:

1. Gets lots of users and services
2. Profit

Originally Posted by st63z

(I guess it helps that they're independent as opposed to MS or AOL properties).

Independant from who? MSN is "independant" too. Yahoo! are a large platform, just like the other two.

Originally Posted by st63z

I still remember the publicized Hotmail problems and outages and Passport problems...

Yahoo!'s had it's fair share of problems too. A couple of weeks ago, their mailing list service was completely offline for an entire weekend, and just recently, their photo sharing stuff was down.

You get what you pay for, really, and anyone whinging about these freebies going down really should think about that.

[PDAlien]

I recommend using MyRealBox (http://www.myrealbox.com) for email. It's a free IMAP service, so it's even better than POP! Unfortunately, I was having all my Yahoo email forwarded there and now I have to rethink that.

[ledowning]

Thanks a lot for the info. I don't use Yahoo for e-mail, but I have a home page set up that I use sometimes. Checked the options and they were all turned on! You would think that companies would inform you when changes are made to your account.

Just seems that you can't trust anyone anymore. What a shame!!!

[Jason Dunn]

So should I start offering @pocketpcthoughts.com email aliases? :-)

[JJ]

Great info. Thanks for the warning!