Yahoo has been testing the beta version of its Yahoo Mail service since September 2005. Now it finally launched in finished form. Yahoo Mail has been worth the wait, because it is slightly better than Google’s popular Gmail service, in my opinion. Unlike Gmail and Microsoft’s Hotmail, Yahoo Mail allows users to exchange text messages with cell phones, too. It also offers unlimited storage of emails and attachments free of charge. In comparison, Gmail offers 2.9 gigabytes for free and sells additional storage space from $20 (6GB)  to $500 (250GB) per year. Hotmail is going to offer 5GB for free and 10GB for $20 a year shortly.

What is nice about the new Yahoo Mail version, is that it acts more like a stand-alone computer program than a web-based application. For instance, you can now drag messages into folders, select groups of messages and right-click on messages to get a menu of options such as marking messages as read/unread or deleting them. Another handy feature is that you can open new tabs in Yahoo Mail, so you can have your inbox in one tab, a new email you’re composing in another tab and a live conversation in yet another one.

Overall, Yahoo Mail offers lots of features that Gmail and Hotmail still lack. But to be fair, Gmail has been in beta status since April 2004 and is still waiting to be released as final version.