Window Live Mail Beta: YEAH! Extra space is great but the interface is really annoying! Just the banner on the top took 1/3 of the browser cluttering the rest of the information, producing a very restricted feeling!(especially for people with small monitor screen) To make things worse, sometimes it doesn't allow user to read the bottom of the email as the vertical scroll bar is missing, hiding the rest of the mail from user. Luckily it allows the user to switch back to the old version, I strongly urge user to switch back to the old version until a better interface design is created or maybe they have no intention at all...
Yahoo! Mail Beta: A similar interface to Micro$ but they space out their boxes in such a way that user can easily get to their intended location. They have some interesting shortcut and are capable of creating tabs which are similar to Firefox browser. Best of all, they even have a mini tutorial teaching the basic usage and navigation of the new mail interface when you switch to the beta version for the first time. The con side is their advertisement, not a single white space is wasted! The intuitive placement of advertisement merge perfectly with the email interface, even though it don't really bother me, the extra advertising banner means extra loading time for the page to be display.
Gmail Beta: the revolution of the previous two mail services. Even though it enters the market last, it has captured a lot of user with their intuitive design and large disk space! (The first to introduce 2GB of space) Similar to Google webpage, their interface is neat, clean and simple. No gimmick. It is extremely easy to use and extremely fast (time lag between switching emails or folder is extremely short! The shortest between the three until yahoo and micro$ decided to roll out their own beta version). Another innovation in the mail service is the introduction of internal search engine which is really useful when you have thousand of emails to keep track of (make possible when 2GB of disk space is provided ^_^) Finding mail has never been any easier!
Without the introduction of Gmail Beta, there may not be much improvement to the current top free email services, so three cheers for Gmail, bringing yet another innovation and creating better technology for mankind. However, micro$ Window Live Beta still has a lot to improve, but I guess that's the reason they call it beta. Beta to do something bout it than being out of business.
