I have been playing with the beta for Yahoo! Mail and it sure does look nice. The responsiveness, however, to put it nicely, sucks. It takes 10-15 seconds everytime it loads which is pretty much a show stopper right there. There is a lag on clicking things. The RSS feeds are there but it doesn’t keep track of feeds you have already read which is another major strike against.
Congratulations on porting Microsoft Outlook! I wish everyone would stop chasing Microsoft and do something much better.
[Update: I have started using Y!M Beta now for one of my accounts and it has definitely improved. It is still too long in loading up but it has a smoothness that is lacking in gmail. I only wish it was functionaly for Yahoo! business accounts…
Update 2: Global release of Y!M is solid.]
No Soap, Radio! 
Yeah, I’ve had to change the way I use Yahoo Mail from occasionally visiting it to leaving it open in a window, but that’s how a more traditional email client works, so I’m cool with that.
I know it looks like an Outlook clone now (although the old Yahoo Mail UI was the same with folder-tree on the left and the inbox on the right) and some of the features like resizable columns feel antiquated, but I love the automatic subject line generator.
What daya mean when you say the yahoo beta is cloan of outlook?? In reality its a cloan of any desktop email client. You do remember the days of real email dont you? And the yahoo beta does not “suck”, its a BETA. Those of you that dont understand what a beta is, its not supposed to work perfect. Just seeing people use the word “suck” tells me that you have no concept of what beta is.
I agree with you entirely about the responsiveness. Sucks on my machine too. Most disappointing, though, is that the only changes are to the interface. Same completely lackluster feature-set otherwise (composing messages, etc.). As a web mail interface, I think the old version is better.
I also agree, very slow and yes, it is a beta, but even for a beta it is buggy. I have tesed betas before (not counting anything form Google) and can safely say that this beta is the least ready for prime time that I have seen. It is nearly as bad as Yahoo’s music engine. I have gone back to the old version. I do like Yahoo’s mobile interface, I think that is better then this beta and would use that over this any day.