The new, improved Yahoo!
This time the heavy hand of improvement falls on Yahoo email. Oh, excuse me—Yahoo! email; we musn’t forget that enthusiastic exclamation point.
Yipee, yahoo! This is what we users get for our stalwart loyalty, and not just from Yahoo.
Have a face cream you like? Better buy up the store’s supply immediately, before they stop making it and start “improving” it instead. Likewise all cosmetics, cleaning products, bras (no guys, you wouldn’t know, but it’s the case), automobiles, and foods. And don’t get me started on cell phones; I cannot even begin to keep up with the learning curve there (see this). No one over thirty can.
Et tu, Yahoo!? Now, every time I go to my email, before I am allowed to see my inbox, I am forced to view the Yahoo countdown clock for change:
The countdown has begun. Please upgrade to the newest version of Yahoo!Mail by 9-16-2011.
2X faster. How great is that? So great.
Even better spam protection. Yes!
Clean, simple design that makes email a breeze.
A likely story.
I plan to draw it out to the bitter end by clicking on “No, thanks, continue to Yahoo! Mail Classic” until they force me to make the shift. After all, they call it “classic” for a reason (remember New Coke and Coke Classic?).
And don’t think I’m just being difficult (although I probably am being difficult). I already know how the new, improved, Yahoo! works. I have another Yahoo email account that I’ve already switched over, and I hate it. It’s harder to see at a glance whether you have email. I don’t like the font. I don’t like the way the flags work. I do not like it at all.
Oh, I know. I’ll probably adjust; I usually do. But I already mourn the Classic version that they plan to rip untimely from me without my consent or approval.
[ADDENDUM: I just realized that people will advise me to go to gmail. I know; I already have a gmail account, too. For whatever reason, I prefer Yahoo. Or at least I used to prefer Yahoo, until now.
I also just realized I sound awfully ornery. I’m really not (am I?). It’s just that I form very strong habits—especially with technology, which is not my forte—and making switches throws me quite a bit. Remember my MacHate? I now use my Mac exclusively, since my PC laptop died, but I still prefer the latter.]
Neo, I concur. Other problems I have encountered:
Most of the time the edit functions line (bold, italics, underline, colors, create link) does not appear.
Also a problem with copy and paste in creating a link. I have found a work around for that, but it took time.
Finally, once I have made the change to the New Yahoo!, I have not found a way to get back to Classic.
I trust that in time Yahoo will deal with the complaints. It is called ‘consumer engineering’, a development process for which Microsoft was also renowned–a substitute for good engineering in the first place.
With hope,
Jim
For some reason after a few weeks my MacBook Pro took me back to Yahoo! Mail Classic. Oh, happy day! May the same happen to you.
I think temperamentally I’m like you on techno-matters, maybe worse – I resist change like a plague. Anyone could have deduced my future political conservatism by looking at my stubborn resistance to DVD’s. I was still deliberately buying up $1 VHS’s when Blockbuster was clearing them out. (Now I resist blu-ray).
I’m relatively young, so I grew up playing the first generation of video games, and I never got beyond the first Playstation and Nintendo GameCube. (I stopped playing video games when I went to college, but later I brought my old systems to play with occasionally when I got too stressed out and needed to relax – I use old video games, basically, like mood-stabilizers). Anyway, it’s funny how the ornery-ness shows up everywhere: there are people like my grandfather, who always look down on video games and would never, ever, ever even consider playing one; and then there are people like me, who are not averse to ALL video games, just the newer ones that “the kids” play today.
With respect to email, my first account was hotmail and I do not feel comfortable using other formats (I also have yahoo and aol accounts). I had a bad hacking experience, so I had to divvy up my email between the three accounts to try and “spread out risk” between them. I still hate using my other accounts.
In computers, I used PC’s until I began to move around a lot, then I got an apple because my friend told me apples never get viruses (all of my PC’s got viruses, and it was a huge pain in the butt). So, luckily or not, my teeth were cut on laptops with apples, and I can’t use anything else.
With cellphones, I had a crappy flip-phone for years just because my aunt wanted me to have it and she paid for it (so wherever I lived I didn’t have to pay for a landline). I have an iphone now, basically because I use apple for computers, and there’s a lot of perks to having my apple phone interface with my computer. I almost never use it as a phone, since I almost never talk on the phone (when I do, it’s usually calls to apple support or microsoft office support to fix problems with their machines).
All in all, I develop firm anchorings in whatever I’m first habituated to using, but I do adapt sometimes. I never adapted to newer video games, and I have no intention of trying. I did adapt to DVD’s, as I always knew my resistance to them was pretty irrational anyway. I just liked VHS’s and I was used to them. I’ve pretty much been an apple man since 2004 or thereabouts, and whenever I use other laptops I’m like a monkey with a keyboard. Maybe I could adapt, but I’m not going to try. (Now I get nitpicky about what sort of wi-fi reception to get on my iphone: “I don’t need no stinkin’ 4G; 3G is perfectly fine. Enough is enough!”).
I like the way they “ask” if you want to switch knowing good and well they’ll get around to forcing it on you.
My new pet peeve is my t-mobile cell phone suddenly “schedules” voice mails for deletion when i delete them. WTF? Apparently they now have a system for stupid people who need to verify several times they want to delete a message before it actually gets deleted. Grrrrrrr
I upgraded my phone to an Android and I installed the Gmail and Yahoo mail apps on it. I recently caught myself checking email on my phone while sitting at my computer. The mobile versions are pretty slick.
No neo, you’re not being ornery by having an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!!!“ attitude towards change.
Having spent a lifetime in engineering and IT, I can testify that a lot of things get changed for no other real reason than that someone got bored.
–
“I also just realized I sound awfully ornery. I’m really not (am I?).”
No. You’re just reacting to today’s speed of technological change, speed of such magnitude as to make even a techie like me sigh in frustration.
Every facet of technology is under constant update, which is trying enough to keep up with, but obsolescence is the pits. I like to think cutting my teeth coding in assembly on the Commodore 64 eons ago is still valuable even if I now code almost everything in high-level languages (even C is high-level compared to assembler), for the skills it imparts in general programming. Others in the profession (especially the Slashdot crowd) scoff, and though I reject their opinions on the matter, I can’t deny a lot of things I did on the C64 are really no longer of use.
And if the computing paradigm gets a major change–say, with the rise of quantum computers to replace the current electronic binary regime, which is over 60 years old–then nearly the entire skill set I have will be swept away like the use of the sailor’s almanac in the face of the marine chronometer and GPS navigation.
A world where ephemerality is becoming the rule for everything will by nature lead men and women to seek some hope for permanence. Here it is seen again that those who think religion’s role in human life is past are totally wrong. And where traditional religion is rejected, by law or by fashion, there the lowly and perilous modern replacements, such as Nazism or Marxism, will take hold.
SteveH,
Sounds very… governmental, doesn’t it?
You won’t avoid annoying “improvements” by using Gmail. Google regularly introduces newfangled frippery to the consternation of users like me who barely managed to grasp the last iteration, and who, what’s more, are sick and tired of having to learn new rules all the time for every single thing that we use every day. However, I do like some of Gmail’s features, such as chatting and the big storage capacity. Also, Google Calendar has helped my extended family in managing the care of aging relations, and Google Docs is great for someone like me who writes for a living on more than one computer, most of which refuse to open documents composed on the others.
So I keep a Gmail account open, but for most correspondence I stick with plain old Outlook with my ISP email address. I know how it works, it gives me plenty of control over display, navigation, spam and such, Microsoft hasn’t introduced any really big and upsetting changes in quite some time — and they’d better not have any such plans, consarn it!
I know, this has been pissin me off too!
There is a way to display your inbox on the new yahoo mail
click on options at the top, it will open up a tab called options, and there ya go
keep up the good work, youre a doll
Neo – When the new version came out, I checked it quickly. I hated it. I like to see all 200 of my emails (1st page) on the screen. I was dismayed when I realized the time was coming when I had to switch… But they fixed that which I hated the most.
I don’t like change either, and I’m a consultant. At one client, they talked about 3.1-huggers (you remember Windows 3.1, rt?) who were resistant to change. I decided never to make my preferences known.
they checked with frujen gladje and umlauts were way too expensive. so marketing went with the exclamation point… it was that or either add blue dots…
” I know; I already have a gmail account, too. For whatever reason, I prefer Yahoo. ”
Well, just…… GET OVER IT!
Sure happy to know………..I’m not the only one!
I’m refusing to upgrade to Windows 7 because you can’t use Outlook for your e-mail. Outlook is so comfortable for me (have used it for 11 years) and all the new ones seem more complex, more restrictive, and harder to manipulate. (Probably just me!) I won’t go into all my beefs with McAfee, Norton, Microsoft and my ISP. They make me pay in more than a financial sense. Yet, I will not give up the connectivity.
My current beef is with the Firefox “upgrade.” Web pages seem to load a lot slower than they used to before the “upgrade.”
Email aside for the moment, “there’s a reason they call it Classic” gave me a good chuckle. I knew a younger woman in California who was enamored of the thought of having a 67 Mustang, and she actually went out to test drive one as a prelude to purchase. She came back with just what I expected…
“I can hardly steer the thing, there’s no air conditioning, the seats don’t adjust and are really awful to sit in, and stopping? I had to practically stand on the brakes!!”
Yes, there is a reason they call them Classic.
When given a choice, the market is going to go to true new and improved. As a software developer, I suspect that the real reasons for Yahoo’s change are for Yahoo rather than the consumer, though. They know that their market will adjust, and the only real question is whether they can expand their market.
NEW! Yahoo email is a pain in the @ss to log out of. It stalls at logout. Even after quitting the browser and opening it up again it still stays open.
Technotrash!
Thought it was me, glad to hear I’m not the only one who hates “new and improved” Yahoo mail.
I have assorted gripes, but one of the main ones is the fact that I can’t cut and paste a hot link into an email.
Maybe it will be a Classic Coke situation and they’ll go back by popular demand?
My question, is there anyone who takes the tutorial when new versions come out? I don’t think i’ve clicked on an online tutorial since 1992 when i felt like a little piece of my life had been taken from me.
@J.J. formerly Jimmy J
You can get outlook express with Windows 7. It has been renamed Windows Live Mail. You just have to download it from Microsoft:
http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mail
My wife uses it with Yahoo Mail since she hates Yahoo Mail because it is not like Outlook express;
CZ: I’ve had trouble logging out, too. Thought it was just something new with my computer, but I guess it’s another reason to hate the new improved Yahoo! Mail.
I somehow got the new yahoo as well. I don’t like it. Every time I opened it, there was a message that my screen resolution was inadequate – so after a couple of weeks, it decided to switch me back to the classic email all by itself.
Suits me just fine.
Definition of Yahoo
1. (in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels ) one of a race of brutes, having the form and all the vices of humans, who are subject to the Houyhnhnms.
2. an uncultivated or boorish person; lout; philistine; yokel.
3. a coarse or brutish person.
Origin: coined by Swift in Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/yahoo
Need I write more?
I believe these technological wonders (wonder-whys) have been sent to try our souls.
I seem to have achieved a balance between tradition and innovation via attrition. Beginning as senior utter novice with a 2000 custom computer (a then-powerful master of nasty wipe-outs), I’ve added bits of hardware and software, including new motherboard and monitor on the last trips to the shop. I’m happy with what has survived: LG and Maxtor drives, Windows XP, IE7, Office 2003, msn-com email. It’s a model of behavioral stability, like me. So far.
I totally agree with you. No your not being difficult Yahoo! is! I hat the new system. it’s much slower.
Everything takes at least two clicks. want to delete a page? One must now confirm that. Want to get to your email? They first have to show you what you might be intrested in.
Next time they *Improve* Yahoo! I do hope they make it better.