Yahoo! Mail Vs Gmail for Business Review

I’ve tried out both Yahoo! Mail and Gmail for business use for the past few weeks. I wanted to give Gmail a fair go, since I’ve been a Yahoo! Mail user since 1998. Long story short, I had to go back to Yahoo! Mail because…

1. Gmail checks external POP3 accounts by its own weird algorithm, to save on resources, this means external mails goes uncheked for up to an hour. Gmail’s POP3 mail check frequency can’t be easily manually controlled like Yahoo! Mail’s ‘check all accounts’ drop down with the Check Mail button. Unless you like looking at Gmail’s 'Accounts and Import' settings all day.

2. Gmail’s threaded view has its advantages, but it becomes a real pain if you keep saving that draft to look at an unrelated email, not in that thread. Again Yahoo! Mail’s tabs allow this.

3. Google can send emails after verification on behalf of other email addresses. However it’s got this very bad habit of adding ‘On behalf of’. Again Yahoo! Mail doesn’t.

I really wanted to stick with Gmail for the following reasons…

1. Encrypted sessions.

2. Canned responses, my workaround for multiple signatures.

3. Tags, although I prefer folders, but I can respect their productivity aspect.

4. Better compatibility with the Opera browser.

Suggestions for Gmail

1. Allow users a tabbed interface option as well.

2. Drop the ‘On behalf of...'.

3. Allow manual adjustment of POP3 mail polling frequency, or at least a more convenient mail check button, maybe a simple F5 or clicking on the logo.

Time will tell if Gmail will listen and offer us options or not…

Plasmas Vs LCDs

This my rant/response to this Yahoo! Tech article:

As the technology fades, plasma TVs see huge discounts - Yahoo! Tech
Mon Jul 6, 2009 5:08PM EDT

I'm really sick of LCD lobbyist, pretending that LCD's are better than Plasma displays, even high end LCDs have trouble with fast motion and viewing angles. LCD supporters keep touting their just one advantage i.e.: 'power consumption' and the difference is not as big as its marketed to be. LCDs still suck at picture quality where it counts!

Thats why the industry killed CRTs, because they couldn't make high margin profits off them anymore, even though they still have the best picture, and now they're doing it to Plasma displays.

Plasmas can easily handle fast motion like CRTs, for real Blacks (Not LCD's fake Greys), Sports, Games etc, they have very wide viewing angles, unlike LCDs, where even at 10 degrees colors start looking different.

Only thing annoying about Plasma displays is their front glass which is no different than CRT's glass and matters little unless you have a lamp shining directly in front of it. Most of the good Plasma displays are coated with anti-reflective material these days.

Sorry to say people, you pay high dollar for crappy displays when you buy LCDs. Damn the false marketing!

Kudos to Panasonic, Samsung and Hitachi for their good Plasma displays.

Yahoo! Tech people, please don't rehash press releases, but do some research first, like:

Refs:

LCD-Plasma Display Technology Shoot-Out - ExtremeTech.com

Plasma display - Wikipedia