Webmail Service Face-Off

Lycos Mail:
Lycos Mail, hosted by the online search engine Lycos, was the most difficult Webmail to receive an account from. With slight difficulties in locating the area to apply for an account, I was already disgruntled by their lack of user friendliness before I even got to evaluate Lycos Mail. Additionally, I could not successfully log into my Webmail account in Opera 8.5. On a plus side, login times were quite speedy at around 4 seconds.

Visually, I like Lycos Mail’s Inbox. While many would probably differ on my inclination to this simple teal / white / blue scheme, nothing beats pure simplicity and non-distracting colors. Not surprisingly, the Inbox is bordered by graphical ads. Nevertheless, I realize that without advertising, Lycos Mail and all other Webmail services would most likely not exist. So, no matter how much I detest advertising within my inbox, it is unavoidable and essential to provide free services like Webmail.

For a novice to Webmail, Lycos Mail is definitely not for you. With troublesome folders and buttons, Lycos Mail automatically closes and rearranges any open displays when you click on another button. For example, I’m looking at a message and click reply. All of a sudden my Mailbox folders disappear and the buttons get rearranged, all without my consent. On the contrary, providing you can locate Lycos Mail’s “Help” link, the guys at Lycos Mail have compiled a very intricate and simple-worded question and answer section to assist almost every issue you may run into.

One of Lycos Mail’s most valuable features is that it allows for POP3 checking for up to 5 emails accounts, provided you know the needed information of your alternate email providers. While this is a pretty useful, and neat function, I doubt the ability to actually store the messages of 6 Email accounts with Lycos Mail’s limited 5mb storage. Another neat feature of Lycos mail is it’s personal email filtering where the user can specifically state which addresses they would not like to receive mail from, and opt to have those messages redirected to either a specific folder or the trash.

Netscape Mail:
Netscape Mail is relatively new in the world of Webmail. Provided by the Netscape Communications Corporation, you can apply for a free email account and receive a screen name or if you already have an AOL or AIM screen name you can automatically sign into your inbox without having to register. After permitting various websites to execute javascript within Firefox and enabling cookies, I continued being bombarded with errors when attempting request data from Netscape Mail’s server. And similarly to Lycos Mail, Netscape Mail refused to open in Opera 8.5 and was the slowest on the contestants while logging into my account at 7 seconds.

Moving on to appearance, Netscape Mail comes with a little more vibrant and exciting interface. It’s light blue gradient background makes the white inbox and folders panel stand out and all important buttons are accented in a different color making them easy to locate. Following the ever-so popular, yet tiresome, normality of most Webmails, immediately after logging in you are greeted with a welcome menu and a large graphical ad hogging the center of the page. Additionally, there is a “Toolbox” punctuated in the upper portion of Netscape Mail’s inbox which offers a lot of options for airfare rates, mapquest maps, and other useless links I don’t care for.

Netscape Mail, in my opinion, is one of the more advanced Webmail services when it comes to user friendliness. When composing mail and replying to messages, a new window is automatically opened and despite the immense vertical ad, the user is presented with a very large workspace area. Netscape Mail also has a message search function and creating and sorting mail into folders is a breeze. Unusually, Netscape Mail automatically will log you out after 30 minutes of inactivity. While I was initially puzzled for why this occurred, I quickly realized it is a security measure (privacy protection) and is easily disabled or altered in your account’s security settings.

Netscape Mail doesn’t off anything out of the ordinary. Most issues are covered in the Help section, and with relative ease users can import their entire contact list. There is even a print function when viewing your address book and email messages.

Round One Scores
Round One yielded many interesting results. Scoring mainly on user friendliness, appearance, compatibility, and general first impressions, it was tough to come to a conclusion. But after painfully subjecting each Webmail provider to torturous examinations (no Webmail providers were hurt in the production of this article), I managed to score each Webmail as fairly as possible. Let’s see how they scored:

GMail : 8
Hotmail : 7
Yahoo Mail : 7.5
Lycos Mail : 6.5
Netscape Mail : 7

ROUND TWO

In Round Two, I have compiled a chart for comparing the individual features of each Webmail provider. I attempted to compare a few common features in addition to a couple unique features to help identify which Webmails struggle to meet the bare necessities and which went the extra mile.

Round Two Scores
Round Two was pretty close. Most Webmail providers offered very similar features, yet a few areas such as amount of storage, and maximum attachment size helped when it came to handing out the scores. Lacking essential features like Anti Virus scanning and automatic forwarding resulted in a loss of points, as did very low storage sizes. Take a look at the Round Two scores:

GMail : 8
Hotmail : 6.5
Yahoo Mail : 8
Lycos Mail : 5
Netscape Mail : 6

And The Winner Is…
After completing Round Two, the Webmail Face-Off is over. The final scores are as follows:

GMail : 16
Hotmail : 13.5
Yahoo Mail : 15.5
Lycos Mail : 11.5
Netscape Mail : 13

Google’s GMail came out champion at the end of the Webmail Face-Off. With its simple interface, lack of graphical advertising, huge amount of storage, and outstanding user friendliness, GMail is a highly impressive Webmail. Trailing shortly behind is Yahoo Mail, leaving Hotmail, Lycos Mail, and Netscape Mail in the dust. While each Webmail provider functioned correctly, sent and received mail, and even allowed organizing messages into folders, they differ in many ways. I hope I have accomplished my goal of this article to assist in pointing out the variations in different Webmail providers and assisting you in finding which Webmail provider is right for you. If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, please leave a message or email me at rsp124712[at]GMail.com.

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