The "new" Yahoo Mail

I've just begun using the new Yahoo Mail beta, which is supposed to mimic -- through a Web browser -- the way a stand-alone e-mail client works, with the ability to drag and drop mail into folders, see messages in a preview below, easily delete them, etc. All that is working great (but Ilene misses the "check all" feature of the old Yahoo Mail and therefore won't switch. I've been reluctant but figured I'd give it a try).

Another good thing -- new mail is "pushed" into the browser and appears without you having to hit a button to check mail and reload the page. Another good thing: EVERY message in EVERY folder is accessible in the same window. No more "next 100" messages, should you have that many in any one folder (and I do) That alone is enough to keep me in Yahoo country.

One of the big new features the Yahoo Mail beta is the integration of instant messaging into the client itself. It works OK, but not great. I even miss the e-mail alert function of Yahoo Messenger. With chat enabled in the Yahoo Mail beta, I don't get the same kind of little pop-up in the lower right portion of the screen when I get new mail. And when somebody wants to chat, the minimized program in the bar at the bottom of the screen doesn't change color as obviously to tell me that somebody wants to chat. And even if my speaker was loud enough to hear the new beeping function (presuming I'm not away from my desk at that moment, which I at least sometimes am), I need it to be obvious when someone is IMing me AND when I get new mail. (You can still use Yahoo Messenger, but when you're logged on there, you can't use the IM feature in the Yahoo Mail client.) And once my Internet Explorer windows start stacking up, I can't see the status of Yahoo Mail without clicking on it, and I prefer to see the window itself in a wholly different color.

My solution is probably going to be running IMs and getting e-mail notices through Yahoo Messenger and not using that feature in the Yahoo Mail beta

but the ability to preview an e-mail in the window below the list (just like a traditional mail client) just might be enough to keep me the new Yahoo Mail.

It really is like a traditional mail client, except that the whole thing runs in a browser window. All I can say is that the competition between Yahoo and Google is leading to quite a bit of innovation on the part of both providers, but as I've written previously, it would take quite a bit to get me using Gmail instead of Yahoo Mail -- and that's why both mega-companies keep upping the stakes (I'm not counting Microsoft's Hotmail or AOL Mail in this competition, but maybe I should).

Another recent innovation from Yahoo: unlimited e-mail storage. And while I don't have 10,000 e-mails stored on the Yahoo servers, I'm amazed that I have that option. And I still don't know how any of these companies does it. And for free, too.