I'm still trying to catch up on the old posts (and stuck on a particular long translation post), but I just reminded myself earlier today that my English writing has degraded so much since my paper-writing days so I'd need to write something now and then to slowly get my edge back (not that it was sharp to start with...)

Anyhow, just read the articles on PC Magazine comparing three web mail services: Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail, and thought I'll put in my two cents on the subject.

First of all, to be fair, I stopped using Hotmail before it got the facelift and all the upgrades it has now so I'm judging from past experience. My first ever email account was with Hotmail and I had no complaint. Until the amount of junk mail escalated, that was. I got another account and separated public and private use, and all was well again. Alas, most of the online activities I was involved in were art-related, and the measly 2MB provided by Hotmail was obviously not enough for frequent image transfers. I had to constantly monitoring my storage to make sure it's not full and thus blocking any more incoming emails.

In search of more space, I got a Yahoo.com account which gave me 4MB. The more I used it, the more I liked it better than Hotmail. Later I got two more Yahoo account for different purposes, one Yahoo.ca and one Yahoo.co.jp, each with 6MB. I'm still using all three now and the Yahoo.com one was my main email account for the longest time. The scene didn't last, however, and now the bulk folder of my Yahoo.com account gets an average of 4-5 junk mails everyday.

In April 2004, I got an invitation for Gmail beta from Google. I was first shocked by the whopping 1GB offered when I read about it and then stunned by the beautiful and sleek interface. Since it was labelled beta, I wasn't sure how long this huge email account bubble would last and didn't really use it, fearing that if I got too used to it, it'd be difficult and painful when the bubble burst. Thankfully it's here to stay, and it's improving everyday (I'd like to think that I played a role in the feature of displaying the number of spam since I sent in a suggestion on the matter after a small chat with Bob).

That's roughly my journey of migration from one web mail service to the next over the past couple of years (ignoring the other one I've used as this is focusing on the three reviewed). Everyone's offering big storage space now so it's not really a factor anymore when one chooses a web mail service. So what cuts it for me? Interface and usability.

Back in my Hotmail days I had dial-up and used Netscape. It was all fine until one day they 'updated' and changed the interface. Granted, more people and most of my friends were on cable by that time, but my adaptation was a lot slower than everyone else when it comes to technology hardware. It took way longer to load the pages and the ads were getting annoying, too. Not to mention that the interface was broken in my Netscape! My brother used IE (and still does, regretfully) so I knew what it could look like. It was still usable, but that was one of the biggest driving force for me to move out. I never looked back.

Yahoo's interface was sleeker compared to the Hotmail then, and the ability to customise the look was a big plus for me. All three accounts sport different colour themes for the mail part and My Yahoo! part. I especially loved (and still love) My Yahoo! My Yahoo.com has the email centre, briefcase, Garfield, a US/CAN/NTD/YEN currency converter, and RSS feeds from PC World, mozillaZine, Mozilla.org, NYT Technology, PC Magazine, and NASA. My Yahoo.ca has the email centre, briefcase, word of the day, and my groups. My Yahoo.jp has the email centre, briefcase, dictionary (my default Japanese dictionary of choice, btw, and also included in the dictionarysearch extension for Mozilla and Firefox), avatar (unlike the Yahoo.com one, this one can be shown without Yahoo Messenger), and new site listings from Yahoo.co.jp in various categories including anime, seiyuu, astronomy, geography, game music, and dogs. As you can probably guess, My Yahoo! is pretty much what I use most of the time for Yahoo's service now. The former main email Yahoo.com is still active, but I'm liking it less and less. It's getting slower when loading and the ads are also getting on my nerves.

Gmail's interface... Need I say more? Clean and simple yet beautiful, sleek and smart, lightning fast response, no annoying and distracting graphical ads (and no text ads either now for non-English conversations), super convenient conversation for discussions, powerful search... You get the point. Of course, Gmail is not without its flaws (eg. no quick link to contacts when needing the email address in the compose mode, no support for non-Unicode encoding), but it is also in beta. There is room for improvement but I believe they will do a sound job in fulfilling it.

My verdict? Gmail, obviously. You didn't see that coming, right? XD