Yahoo Mail's Beta Is Just Not Doing It For Me

When Yahoo Mail's beta UI came on the scene, I gave it a shot. I stuck with it for months. And today, I switched back to basic mode. Why? Simple. With all the glitz, the AJAX, the animated characters, and the hootin'-falootin' big-time splash that they're making this app out to be, I found I could read my mail less well, and less quickly, by using the beta UI. Specifically:

• The new UI is S-L-O-W. I spent more friggin time watching that stupid animated cartoon guy break-dancing, running from an ostrich, or getting a 1950's belt-round-the-waist workout than I did reading my email. When the app finally did load, switching between emails and performing basic actions like, oh, I dunno..."sending an email" or "deleting an email" took forever.
• The new UI was buggy. Today, regardless of how many times I refreshed, I couldn't get past a half-unrendered welcome screen.
• The new UI wasn't all that. Sure, you had tabs. Sure, it looked kinda like Outlook circa 2000. But I didn't feel that the presentation was really all that.

In the end, I decided to switch back. Now my Yahoo email client is uglier but darn fast and stable. No thanks, Yahoo. I'll stick with the boring Web 1.0 version of your mail client. Hey, at least it works.