Yahoo Mail sucked (pardon my French). However their new version (beta as is the norm these days) is getting rave reviews. Here is a review which compares it with GMail and Microsoft's Live Mail.

The key features are:

  • Ajax interface
  • Desktop application look-and-feel (like Microsoft Outlook)
  • Three-pane, multi-tabbed view
  • RSS Integration

Let's see how Inquirer raved:

A clearly defined left-hand-side navigation pane, and a multi-tab viewing window that allows, for example, your inbox coupled with a preview pane or a newly invoked tab displaying an individual email, is easily one of the best interfaces for web-mail I’ve used to date. These sort of advanced Ajax features could be slow and unresponsive in a poorly implemented design – but Yahoo has ensured they’re almost as quick as a standard desktop application, with the added portability of a web-based client. It works perfectly with Firefox too (albeit Opera support is lagging).

All of these positive attributes add-up to ensure Yahoo is on to a winner with their updated mail service.

To summarize Yahoo Mail beta was ranked ahead of GMail, Microsoft Live Mail was nowhere near.

Here is a Flash demo.