Hotmail Begins to Upgrade Free Accounts

Myrmi writes "It looks as if Hotmail have started to upgrade free Hotmail accounts to 250Mb of space as promised. The account the screenshot is from is an old account - created August 1999 - so I guess they're upgrading the accounts in chronological order. Hopefully they'll get round to newer ones soon."

Comments

My Biggest Problem

[Klar]

Sure space is a big issue with the 2mb hotmail accounts, but I think my biggest problem with their service is speed. Even on a broadband connection, the pages usually load very very slowly. This was the main reason that I switched to gmail--it just loads faster. And to top it off, gmail offers 4*250mb plus features like conversations and a good quick spell checker. For me to switch back now, it will take a lot of *new* features on hotmail's service.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Vicsun]

But, don't forget - not everyone has gmail yet (so it's not a question of people going back to hotmail - it's a question of less people switching to gmail when it goes public), and a switch isn't hassle free; people need to inform everyone of their new email address, import their old address book, etc.
With the biggest issue which is space, no longer being an issue I can see many people sticking to hotmail even after gmail goes public.
I mean, sure conversation grouping and labels are nice, but for many people this alone isn't enough to justify the inconvenience of changing an email address.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[dncsky1530]

Definately right, the one gig of space in gmail is just to get people to sign up for an account. once you use gmail all the features are great, even in beta. Hotmail will have to improve alot more than the storage space (which is obviously needed) their spam filtering isnt very good, my paypal comfirmation emails usually get filtered to the junk folder. The large ads advertising personals and classifieds aren't usually what you want to see when checking your mail.

250 megs is a start, but it's too little too late.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[paragon_au]

Gmail may be fast. But I, along with some other I know who use firefox, have problems sometimes opening e-mails.
Sometimes it'll just say 'loading...' in the top right forever. Even when you sign out and sign in it still has this problem. This is a MAJOR problem, and seem to only occur with the most recent e-mail about 1-5% of the time.

In fact, while I'm at it, anyone know how to solve this problem?

Re:My Biggest Problem

[pbranes]

Hotmail drags for everybody. Just check out this google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=hotmail+slow&start= 0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=o rg.mozilla:en-US:official

I still only use Hotmail for signing up for forms where I *know* they will be spamming whatever account I give them.

Hotmail is just too little too late for me to take it seriously.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[shadowmas]

i still use my hotmail account as the primary account even though i have a gmail because i can download it to my local machine for backup. yes i know hotmail is using a proprietery HTTPMail protocol but its quite simple and i have a simple perl script which download and backup hotmail emails to my local disk via a cron job. until gmail gives me similar facility i dont want to use gmail as my primary account because i want to be able to back them up easily.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[pbranes]

Here's the solution to the hotmail issue. GMAIL INVITES FOR EVERYONE:

• http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-3205089053-7c839b3 f0d-aaacd203f5
• http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-3205089053-8c0f0ad f90-f97c33de64
• http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-3205089053-e5325e7 649-ef9a8957f9
• http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-3205089053-0a631fe c1b-6e7ae9764c
• http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-3205089053-964e91f e0b-fc27d53f64
• http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-3205089053-89ecbd4 dd5-8acf82e14a

Re:My Biggest Problem

[dreadfire]

I agree. MS believes that making the email look pretty and having useless things everywhere is the way to do it. Well if you want pure power and a simpler look go with GMail. Gmail is one of the best email services I have used. I don't even use my POP account anymore because GMail is even better than outlook on many levels.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Misinformed]

Well, get an invite here then!

Re:My Biggest Problem

[bmwm3nut]

ah ha! i'm not crazy. i thought it was only happening to me. i could even log into different computers and firefox wouldn't open the message. but it was only 1 message. once i opened it in IE, it worked. i told gmail about the problem, but they didn't seem to care.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[AnwerB]

This was the main reason that I switched to gmail--it just loads faster.

I noticed this too - it flies compared to Hotmail or Yahoo, but I'm a little worried that the honeymoon will end when it moves from beta and allows millions of more users.

Then again, if anyone can pull it off, it's Google.

The only comment I would make on the Gmail account is that it's hard to list the size of emails and attachments. You have to read the email to see the size of the attachment and there is no size info in the list view. OK, so it's a GB, but it doesn't mean that you won't want to find email to delete after a year or so, especially with large attachments like spreadsheets or pdf's. Right now, I label all the large emails I receive with a 'big' tag so that I can easily find them later.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[the_2nd_coming]

ahh, I love my hotmail connectivity in entourage :-) 250 MBs means hat now I can use Hotmail as m main address and not worry about it.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Misinformed]

Or some more, here, here, here, here, or here!

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Klar]

The only comment I would make on the Gmail account is that it's hard to list the size of emails and attachments.
Ya, I find this to be a small problem too. The only thing I can think of with the current setup is to do a search for any email with an attachment, then mouseover the attachment icon to display the filename. Not a great solution, but meh.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Misinformed]

Really? I've had no probs with actually loading emails using Firefox 0.8, 0.93 and 1.0PR. The only major prob I've had is using the backspace key took me back form an email to whatever box I came from, but using the back arrow would take me back to the login screen. Don't have the problem using FF1.0PR, but don't know if gmail or the 'upgrade' was the solving factor.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[prinko]

i dont know about firefox, but i do know that gmail doesnt work with opera, my browser of choice. there are some known "browser incombatibilites" out there, and i think they recommend using IE for now.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[bonhomme_de_neige]

The only comment I would make on the Gmail account is that it's hard to list the size of emails and attachments.

Fair call - why not report it as a bug? I've reported a few things that since got fixed or at least added to the to-do list, so they really do listen ;p

Re:My Biggest Problem

[TykeClone]

Could you forward them to your hotmail address easily enough to do a backup on them?

Re:My Biggest Problem

[danger_boy_13]

Yeah, the space is the biggest thing, and the loading. I was about ready to switch to Yahoo because of the space (and because I can't seem to get a Gmail invite). I have heard good things about Gmail, but its hard to get an invite. If anyone has one to spare, that would be cool. My e-mail is on my profile.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure space is a big issue with the 2mb hotmail accounts, but I think my biggest problem with their service is speed.

well until they let people sign up for gmail publically then this really doesn't matter, does it? it's not like I can use gmail yet... I've used hotmail since 1999 as well.. and I'll tell you this, if it keeps up with the crappy performance I've seen in the last two weeks (everybody I know with a hotmail account has had problems with emails not getting delivered) then I'm going to want gmail even more!!!

Re:My Biggest Problem

[evslin]

If GMail's layout continues to be as sparse as Google itself, then I dont see why it can't continue to load quickly after it leaves the beta stage.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[TrentL]

The two main things I don't like about Hotmail are:

1) It converts linsk in emails to JavaScript, for some inexplicable reason. When using Firefox, you can't open the link in a new tab. You have to click on it directly. Frustrating.

2) The pages load in a jerky manner. Like you say, it loads kind of slow, but the buttons are moving around all over the place as it loads, increasing the chance you'll accidentally click the wrong menu button.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[novakreo]

I noticed this too - it flies compared to Hotmail or Yahoo, but I'm a little worried that the honeymoon will end when it moves from beta and allows millions of more users.

Then again, if anyone can pull it off, it's Google.

I think Google is already moving in that direction. I've given out heaps of invites in the past couple of weeks, and a few hours later, they keep coming back each time.

And so far, so good. They did move recently to automatically delete messages left in the Spam and Trash folders for more than 30 days, but if they keep dishing out invites, I can only assume storage space isn't an issue for them.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[big_groo]

I've got a few invites left...send an email to me and I'll send you one.

Please put 'Slashdot Gmail Invite' in the subject field.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[hateyerstate]

An annoying thing with Gmail is I can not open the new mail in their own tab or window (FF1.0PR), I usually middle-click any new messages I have then go through each tab.. but since it uses almost all Javascript, it's not possible to open the messages in a new window or tab. I don't think there are any shortcuts either. Anyone know any way to do this? The only other thing I hate about it is the conversations are sometimes messed up, a message that belongs in the conversation isn't included, or vice versa. It's still in beta and it barely happens, so it is not a big deal.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Glonoinha]

No, I would say the #1 problem is that Hotmail deletes your account if you are inactive for a month and there is no way to get your email history back.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Rich0]

I receive all my email via hotmail/yahoo, but I typically use either kmail or squirrelmail to view it. Right now there isn't any gmail->POP/IMAP software out there for anything but windows. I can use hotwayd/fetchyahoo to handle those services.

I'd actually be happy if I could switch to gmail - they support extended mail addresses like addr+whatever@gmail.com, which means that I can use some advanced whitelisting tools which rely on being able to tag mail by the to line.

Face it, I haven't found a web-based tool yet which is as nice to use as kmail - they are just in two different leagues. I use squirrelmail for remote access, and kmail for at home, and run it all via IMAP on my home PC...

Re:My Biggest Problem

[bechthros]

"OK, so it's a GB, but it doesn't mean that you won't want to find email to delete after a year or so, especially with large attachments like spreadsheets or pdf's."

remember, though, that part of the deal for the gig of space is that they get to read your mail. I mean, for the purposes of amassing a giant store of personal information, they *want* you to leave as many emails there as possible, for as long as possible, attachments included.

nothing is free.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[ImaLamer]

Sure space is a big issue with the 2mb hotmail accounts, but I think my biggest problem with their service is speed.

You forget that e-mail takes at least 6 hours to show up in your inbox.

I've sent stuff to my Hotmail box expecting it to show up in seconds (because it's e-mail!) and it didn't show up until after its use expired.

Personally, the other big problem is the fact that remote images count against your space. If you get spam or HTML formatted e-mail the whole message is counted, not just the text.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail loads quicker because its still in beta and has significantly less than 10% of the number of users that Yahoo or Hotmail have.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[MikeXpop]

I still only use Hotmail for signing up for forms where I *know* they will be spamming whatever account I give them.

I actually wrote out a whole comment about how you should use spamgourmet for that instead, but I see from your email you already know about it. So why do you still use hotmail then?

Re:My Biggest Problem

[WIAKywbfatw]

Why is it that CSS is held up to higher standards that OSS?

So what that the service isn't as fast as it could be all the time? It's still in beta! In fact, if you speak to any of the development team, as I have done personally, they'll tell you that it isn't technically in beta now (I forget the exact term the Gmail developer used to describe the current state of the service), so it's not entirely surprising that it doesn't work as fast as lightning right now 100 percent of the time.

Believe me, there's still a lot more of work to be done before Gmail is ready for public launch, including support for browsers that aren't currently supported (eg, Opera) and drafting to name but two. Expecting the code to be optimised for speed before the final feature set is tied down is asking a bit much, don't you think?

Besides, isn't it standard practice to cut pre-release software some slack? I've lost track of the number of times I've seen someone justify the presence of bugs in FireFox or any other OSS product as being natural because "it's still in beta", so why not give Google the same breaks too?

Re:My Biggest Problem

[noai]

How many users worked on Hotmail? And how many users worked on GMail?

Re:My Biggest Problem

[WolfWithoutAClause]

I think that that is a general problem with web browsers, not gmail.

The problem is that AFAIK, the request to open the http connection is not repeated. If that request gets lost, then the web page never loads; and times out after 30 seconds. Once the connection is open then both sides use retransmission and the connection is reliable.

I *think* that that is the same problem with gmail, and presumably hotmail would also suffer from the same problem.

The chances of getting this problem depends on how many packets are lost. On a well run network, there would be none; but the internet isn't that well run :-)

Re:My Biggest Problem

[MrHanky]

Same here. But when I click refresh, the mail usually loads.

Other than that: Gmail doesn't support Konqueror, but that might be a Konq problem.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Red Alastor]

Yes they do. They just get a lot of mails. Sometimes you get a messages saying "thanks for the feedback but we can't give everyone a personal answer". Sometimes you do get a personal answer. Happened to me once. They fixed the (minor) problem 2 or 3 months later... Never had any problems with Firefox however...

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The only "reading" thats done is by a software program. How else are you supposed to get targeted ads? They have to pay for it somehow. Are you really worried that some person is sitting there, reading all your mail, just for the fun of it?

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Lazyhound]

Gmail may be fast. But I, along with some other I know who use firefox, have problems sometimes opening e-mails. Sometimes it'll just say 'loading...' in the top right forever. Even when you sign out and sign in it still has this problem. This is a MAJOR problem, and seem to only occur with the most recent e-mail about 1-5% of the time. In fact, while I'm at it, anyone know how to solve this problem?

Clear your cache.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank's a lot, you just got Gmail slashdotted . ;)

Re:My Biggest Problem

[bechthros]

I guess that would depend on how interesting the bot thought your email was.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Thiazi]

mod this up.

Finally, someone points out the real problem with Hotmail.

Most hotmail users have low net-fu. They are surprised and dismayed when they lose all their email because the don't log in for a month.

This is the reason most average users leave hotmail.

-Pat

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

They really do that? wow, so that would explain why i haven't touched it in 3 months but i was just able to log in and see a few hundred new e-mails...

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Red Alastor]

They finished Safari compatibility (so I guess that Konqueror works too). They don't talk about Opera but they suggest switching to Mozilla or Firefox.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[mjuarez]

Right now, I label all the large emails I receive with a 'big' tag so that I can easily find them later.

That's a very nice idea. I think I'll go and do that myself.

I would also like a way to strip email of their attachments. There are many cases in which I want to store the email itself for historical and documentation reasons, since it may contain important information, but the attachments are (almost) always copied to my hard disk first. So I don't really need them clogging up my Gmail.

I've reported it already as a suggestion. I'd also love to see a "sort" button and a "size" column, ala Hotmail. If this thing ever goes public, they will have to implement it!

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

On the rare event that you get stuck on that loading screen, pressing ctrl+r (refresh) should fix your problem.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[ESqVIP]

There's no solution for now AFAIK.

To you all who are also having this problem: could you please report it on bug 258950? Together we can take out that "worksforme", and if anybody has a clue on what might be happening we'll hopefully guide the devs to get a fix.

I'm not linking directly because bugzilla blocks slashdot links to avoid server load: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=258950

Re:My Biggest Problem

[pbranes]

Because I sign up for sites where I forget my password 3 years later, so when I want to get back in, they have to email me & if I'm using spamgourmet, the account will have been used up long ago.

But, I still prefer using spamgourmet when possible.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[tekunokurato]

Well, you won't be able top rely on that for long--spam programs will almost certainly be cutting out anything following plus signs in e-mail addresses before long.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[TykeClone]

Got one of them - thanks!

Re:My Biggest Problem

[GreyPoopon]

Man, I wish I could get GMail. I was hoping to get selected for the Beta program, but I think I was too late. Any idea when they'll roll it out?

Re:My Biggest Problem

[niteice]

I have 3. Please email me for one.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Quantum Jim]

You know, that URL is too long. Everything after the first ampersand is optional. e.g.

http://www.google.com/search?q=hotmail+slow

The other options just tell google which page you're on (of search results), what your browser pretends to be, what your language and character encoding are, and other usless triva.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[quantaman]

Hotmail drags for everybody. Just check out this google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=hotmail+slow&star t= 0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=o rg.mozilla:en-US:official

How about gmail slow? Not that I'm arguing your point, just your evidence, I personally feel that gmail is tons faster then hotmail but google search containing your point isn't a good way to argue, what about a google fight, hotmail slow ( 426 000 results) versus hotmail fast (1 090 000 results)

DOH!

well
gmail slow ( 101 000 results) versus gmail fast ( 226 000 results)

that's better

Re:My Biggest Problem

[BagOBones]

Might be because almost every FireFox user has Adblock installed.

I had to remove 1 or 2 rules that caused problems with Gmail. Also the Tabbed Browser Extension also has issues with some Gmail features.

Plain FireFox seems to work great.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[__aafkqj3628]

I've sent stuff to my Hotmail box expecting it to show up in seconds (because it's e-mail!) and it didn't show up until after its use expired.

I've sent emails from my hotmail account TO my hotmail account and never seen them again.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[shufler]

They don't delete your accounts -- they deactivate it.

I've had an account since 1996, back before Microsoft ever touched it. My account has been deactived so many times, that I only reactivate it when for whatever reason, I know mail is going to it.

It's funny, as I use the account as my MSN Messenger name, so you would think by logging into MSN Messenger (or any Passport site), I am in effect, PROVING I am not inactive.

In any event, I do not have the 250mb, probably because I reactived it just last week. I wonder if a new account would receive the 250 megs or not. That said, I wonder if when I get the 250mb, will it disappear in 90 (60?) days when I don't bother to check my mail?

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Twisted Grind]

You (and anyone else for that matter) should hit up http://gmailswap.com/ if you really want a gmail account. I'd recommend checking out the "Neat, Nifty, and Noteworthy Swaps" for a good 10 minute chuckle.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[asavage]

Press j or k to go down or up. You might need to enable keyboard shortcuts under settings.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[tepples]

Until the Gmail invite tree spreads far enough to cover most of the general public, there won't be enough people able to test this.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[maxpublic]

so I guess that Konqueror works too

I just tried it and no, it doesn't work in Konqueror. Or in Opera. And since I don't plan on switching to Mozilla just to use a bloody webmail account, I'll be passing on gmail until they decide to fix the code for compatibility.

Max

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Rich0]

Actually, I was thinking about something like TMDA.

This is a set of programs which implement a whitelist, blacklist, automatic verification system, and temporary email addresses.

If an unknown sender mails you something, they get a bounce message asking them to reply or visit a webpage to verify that the message is not spam. This also verifies the return address. They are then added to the whitelist so they don't have to do this more than once.

Also, it would be nice if everybody could just post their real email addresses on online forums. This software lets you create an address+key@wherever.com which is good for x days/replies only, and which bypasses the regular filtering. This way you can post it on an online forum and not worry about it getting harvested six months later.

If a spammer deletes the key they just get subjected to the regular filtering.

Tagging emails in the to line is actually a useful concept - it is also great for tagging lists via the subscription address without having to worry about them changing their mail headers and having to revise your procmail scripts.

In short, there are a lot of uses for this. As you do point out, however, subscribing to a website as myusername+spam@gmail.com won't work for long...

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Thiazi]

If you actually read my previous comment you would see I said they lose their email - not their email account for not logging in for 30 days.

From Hotmail.com help file:

Your account becomes inactive if you do not sign in for 30 days, or within the first 10 days after signing up for an account. Once an account becomes inactive, all messages, folders, and contacts are deleted, but the account name is still reserved. If the account stays inactive for an additional 90 days, it is permanently deleted.

Joe Sixpack stops using hotmail because he gets pissed off that after 30 days some documents are deleted that were important to him. They are not recoverable by "reactivating" your account.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[ESqVIP]

True, but we already have a nice number of Firefox users with Gmail accounts, and also developers (like Asa seems to do). What would be better than fix this bug right now, before the majority of people even have the time to experience it?

Too bad it's so unstable to the point only some people see it, and at seemingly random moments.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[firew0lfz]

Oddly enough, I had the same problem with the previous release of Firefox, but it disappeared with the new one.. not sure if that will solve your problem, though.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[taylortbb]

I have found re-loading to solve the indefinite loading 100% of the time. Though I only see once a month at most in Firefox. If anyone wants GMail invites I have many, just ask (e-mail me).

Re:My Biggest Problem

[snilloc]

Ctrl-clicking on a link w/ Firefox won't open in a new tab, but right-clicking and selecting "Open link in new tab" can do it. Also, using the "jump link" extension makes hotmail links much better.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[okmijnuhb]

The biggest problem for me is that i can't use Hotmail in Mozilla Thunderbird.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

why dont you fucktards ever read the fucking FAQ??

There are at least 2 places in the gmail FAQ that address that very issue.

fucking idiots. go find the FAQ and RTFM you dumbfucks.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Saeger]

Hah. I have the same problem with my IMAP mail - I want to keep the email text, but not the honking 10MB .PSD attachment, or whatever. What I end up doing is moving the entire message from the server to a local folder (in ThunderBird), but now I have my mail in two places and the thread is broken.

I suppose I should look into a utility to strip attachements from my inbox on the serverside...

--

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Glonoinha]

Someone else has your password and is logging in, reading you email. The contents of Hotmail email can be read without flagging it as 'read' if you know what you are doing.
That's why my ex-gf's hotmail account lasted more than a year after we broke up, even when she didn't connect to it for 31+ days in a row.
Rhonda, is that you? If so, I still love you. Call me.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[FosterKanig]

if you speak to any of the development team, as I have done personally

Oh My God!!! You are soooo cool. I wish I could talk to developers but I guess I'm not as important as you. :sad smiley goes here:

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Its because you have adblock enabled, and you decided to add the rather strict set of filters that are among those listed on the site. What happens in gmail's case is it matches the regex /\dads\d/, and you're adblocked.

Until adblock supports exceptions, just remove the \d from the start of the appropriate regex.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[aussie_a]

or at least added to the to-do list

How do I get to the to-do list again? I remember there being a link on all the pages but I can't find it now.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[aussie_a]

I guess that would depend on how interesting the bot thought your email was.

Do you have any proof? Or is this a mindless troll?

Re:My Biggest Problem

[shufler]

You are correct: you didn't say their account was deleted, however the post in which you replied to did.

Your post carried the implication that Hotmail deletes accounts because you agreed with it, though this doesn't appears to be intentional.

That said, you bring an interesting issue to light: Hotmail has apparently lowered the inactivity time from never, to 90 days, to 60 days, to now apparently 30 days.

I can already see it becoming two weeks, one week, 3 days, 2 days, 1 day, half a day, 4 hours, etc.

You will see this happen as Microsoft pushes more devices for you to use that will check your hotmail.

"s3xy_t33n_luvbnny463@hotmail.com hasn't logged in the last 2.3 minutes to check he's still got no mail? Delete his 53 gigaquads of storage space!"

Re:My Biggest Problem

[flonker]

Try Mailinator.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[aegipan]

I am presently using Firefox and haven't had the problem yet with it. However, ever since I got the Gmail account, have had the same problem with IE6. Sometimes closing and re-opening the browser will 'fix' the problem and other times it takes multiple tries to get past the log in page. At times too I have got a page that says something about 'sorry' the page you requested is not available, try again in x minutes ! I just chalked it up to the fact that it is still beta and they are working on teh problem.... hopefully !

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh. Some bastard got the email address I wanted, and when I did a PW request just to see if it existed yet, it told me it sent the password to an AOL.com account.

Robbed by an AOL user! The horror! The horror!

I signed up for an account the first day they had signups and still no invite. *sob*

Re:My Biggest Problem

[xtapalapaquetl]

The loading itself is a problem. It loads in java. And for my friend with a bogged down computer, she isn't able to get the java runtime for her mozilla.

When gmail is out of beta, will it be possible to load gmail without java?

Keep in mind that Mozilla (Firefox) does not have Java support included by default.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Bob Gelumph]

Reloading has worked for me every time.
This is with Firefox 1.0.0 and the previous version

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Bob Gelumph]

Contact them about this.
Submit it as a feature request or bug report or something. That is the purpose of this beta testing

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Curtman]

250 megs is a start, but it's too little too late.

Amen to that. I already upgraded my account. Now it ends with @gmail.com, and I get 1GB of storage. 250MB is a downgrade at this point.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the same thing goes for why MSN Search and Yahoo! load quicker than Google?

Oops! They don't. Think again.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Myen]

Looking on bugzilla.mozilla.org found bug 2920; from there got a link to this extension. Havn't tried it, but sounds like it should work.

Might be something you want to look at.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[dysprosia]

Enable a proxy server. Gmail has always failed on directly connecting and always worked on enabling a proxy server, so that may be it.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[kyhwana]

The latest preview version of 7.6 works ok with gmail, so I guess 7.6 will work too when it comes out.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[kyhwana]

What?
Gmail doesn't use java.
It makes use of javascript and DHTML/COM stuff, I think, but not java.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[ImaLamer]

No joke, their service sucks that much.

With so much free e-mail, and good domains at that, why go hotmail?

I've been in the same place as you. I've sent homework to my hotmail account, from my hotmail account, expecting to print it at school. I almost failed that class.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[juhaz]

Until the Gmail invite tree spreads far enough to cover most of the general public, there won't be enough people able to test this.

Seeing that each new person seems to get six invites within a week of joining, the tree is really spreading quite fast at this point already.

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

if u dont want junk mail but you want to get links and stuff to dl shit from use "whatever"@dodgeit.com great site

Re:My Biggest Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have been willing to stick with hotmail's smaller service if they had kept WEB DAV.

Thanks to their announcement, I've moved to other email providers and should be fully gone by the end of November.

Smart move Microsoft, now I have ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to visit your MSN portal!

Re:My Biggest Problem

[OrangeHairMan]

All you have to do is hit reload at that page. Always works for me.

-orange

Re:My Biggest Problem

[mgcarley]

I noticed this too - it flies compared to Hotmail or Yahoo, but I'm a little worried that the honeymoon will end when it moves from beta and allows millions of more users.

What if gmail never moves out of beta- sure google could "pull it off" - but, with the whole 6-invitation-at-a-time system in place, maybe they are strategically converting users from every other email service.

It becomes a mathmatical thing - to the power of 6... and we all know that google and its whole thing is big on fun mathmatical algorithms...

Im glad for one

[Saven Marek]

Am I one of the only people who would rather use hotmail anyway rather than gmail or spymac? gmail to me is a confusing interface and spymac is down half the time. hotmail is just simple and it works

well it works in that maybe I am used to all its quirks and how to log in perhaps compared to gmail. Many years of habit make light work as they say

Re:Im glad for one

[tmbg37]

Am I one of the only people who would rather use hotmail anyway rather than gmail or spymac?

Yes.

Re:Im glad for one

[AmigaAvenger]

hotmail is just simple and it works

please don't make it that obvious that you are on the MS payroll... There is nothing simple about hotmail! I would have to say 99% of people here would say the same statement about gmail, but certainly not hotmail!!
simple?? have you looked at the interface lately?!

Re:Im glad for one

[lukewarmfusion]

Are you still using Lotus 1-2-3, too?

Re:Im glad for one

[shadowmas]

the new hotmail interface is hardly simple. just goto the attachment screen it takes u a while to see that the ok button is above the browse for input box.

also it uses javascript links which mean u cant right click and select open in new tab/window. so u cant let each email load in the a seperate tab while ur reading one of them.

old hotmail interface was much better.

Re:Im glad for one

[Lisandro]

Oh, c'mon, he's got a point. I like GMail a lot, but Hotmail it's "good enough" for 99% of users, even more if they boost the mailboxes to 250MB. There's a gazillon users of Hotmail thanks to the tie-in with MSN Messenger. And besides the "cool factor", what's the point of changing mails if Hotmail gives you a comparable mailbox size? (I know, but realistically, it's DAMN hard to fill 250MB of mail, never mind 1GB).

My quirks with Hotmail are others; namely, how it has become downhill since purchased by Microsoft (just compare the old interface) and it being a spam magnet like no other.

Re:Im glad for one

[urmensch]

For middle clicking into a new tab: Get the Hotmail Tabs extension.

Re:Im glad for one

[jsc19702]

Gmail interface is confusing? It's the simplest by far of the big ones out there.

Re:Im glad for one

[Xpilot]

Are you still using Lotus 1-2-3, too?

With Windows 1.0! Where you can integrate your spreadsheet with MIAMI VICE!

Re:Im glad for one

[superpulpsicle]

NO WAY. Hotmail gui does not cut it. You want to see good interface? Try using like an exchange server with remote Outlook client. No, not the MS Outlook.exe, but the online interface. That's about as good as online email gui gets.

Re:Im glad for one

[dakryx]

Seriously doing anything with hotmail is just a hassle these days.

Re:Im glad for one

[Fizzl]

Well, I just tried to offer my wife a gmail account...

Me: I have 6 gmail invites but no friends to invite. Wan't an invite?
Her: No
Me: Why not?
Her: What for?
Me: Well... It's err... Run by google.. or something. And it's very exclusive! Only invited people can join!
Her: Well... Duh. Can I get my hotmail stuff forwarded there?
Me: Sure! Just lemme look at the hotmail settings!
[pondering]
[twiddling]
[a lil' bit of hac'n]
[frustration]
Me: Forget it...

Re:Im glad for one

[barks]

There's a gazillon users of Hotmail thanks to the tie-in with MSN Messenger.

If Google came out with a decent IM....well I'd jump ship from MSN and be on my gmail account faster than a cougar on a crippled chicken.

Re:Im glad for one

[Agent_9191]

gmail has a confusing interface? gmail's interface is much, MUCH easier to use than Hotmail. I was able to do everything within gmail in an hour, while I'm still learning about things Hotmail has stored away deep in buried menus and such. Also, in response to the article, I don't think they're upgrading in chronological order because I've had my hotmail account since roughly '97/'98 and it's still sitting at 2 MB...

Re:Im glad for one

[Finkbug]

"Are you still using Lotus 1-2-3, too?"

You've got to see this Windows 1.0 thing it uses. The interface of the future!

Re:Im glad for one

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google came out with a decent IM...

Hmmm... not just a decent IM, but if Google doesn't try to get too ahead of itself, it's quite possibly one of the few capable of competing with MS in quite a number of things.

too little, too late

[MrRTFM]

Gmail rules!

Go Google!!

Hotmail has been a complete pain in the ass for sucdh a long time - people losing their accounts and info if they didnt log in within 30 days - what a crock. I'll be glad when Hotmail dies

Re:too little, too late

[cyfer2000]

but many people use outlook to access hotmail. So, hotmail still have its point, though I don't know how could hotmail make money by supporting outlook.

but if google make a browser and integrate the gmail into this browser, the story will be different. The gmail still could run as the way it is running and showing text ads. And people could use it as if it is a email client. So google will make money from gmail.

Re:too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Googlebar extension for Firefox has got links to GMail

indeed?

[valkyriekl]

I've had my hotmail account since way before it became MSN Hotmail, and I've had my 250mb since mid August. Which means...

MORE SPAM!! YEAH!!!

Re:indeed?

[karniv0re]

Yeah, remember the OLD Hotmail? I remember when they started changing the interface every year or so. I would get so pissed, and then eventually get used to it. I even paid for one of the premium accounts last spring, because I was tired of the 2MB. Then my 10MB started to fill up. They finally upgraded me to 2GB, but now that I've got Gmail, I'll never go back. Unless of course I feel like wading through spam and whatnot.

Re:indeed?

[robogun]

I remember that globe logo -- much better than a butterfly. My 1998 acct is still capped at 2mb tho -- which sucks because it is always nearly full, because I tried to get a free ipod and now get tons of spam, big ones too.

Re:indeed?

[tiks]

i also had an account with hotmail since '98 (or was is 97) .. but 2 yrs back i made a mistake of buying more space from them ... that seems to be the only reason they have not increased my acct size , every now & then they throw in the usual warning messages that ur acct is nearly close to its limit & i need to buy more space , but thanks to google i m very close to move all my conversations to gmail !!

Mines a christmas 1999 one

[happyhippy]

...and its still 2mb. Any news on the attachment sizes? 1mb is pretty crappy.

Re:Mines a christmas 1999 one

[thatnerdguy]

mine's from late '97 if i recall correctly (got a nice four letter username with my initials) and it's 10mb. I simply keep checking it because it's the email I used to signup for a few things. Gmail is my primary account.

Re:Mines a christmas 1999 one

[Anonymous Coward]

The new attachment size is 10mb. Send your mp3's and jpg's, yo.
http://www.imagine-msn.com/hotmail/en-US/upgrade .aspx

ooh! look at me! i'm a slashdot user! i automatically assume the worst for anything coming from microsoft!

Re:Mines a christmas 1999 one

[kazanski]

I've heard that they are decreasing it to 640KB, because that ought to be enough for anybody...

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

This will probably be modded troll, but I'm really asking myself, who on earth is using hotmail of all free mail services and why?

At least here in Germany there are several freemail providers that offer at least the same amount of MB and allow me to use pop3 and imap, so why should I care about Hotmail?

Re:Who cares?

[M0nkfish]

I created my hotmail account a long time ago now. Back then there were very few alternatives it was Hotmail or Yahoo. I chose hotmail mainly because a lot of my friends also used MSN Messenger and at the time, having a Hotmail account was the only way to access it (the Passport service hadn't been introduced then).

As to why I haven't changed, its for the same reason you don't move house unless you actually have to. I use my hotmail address to deal with a number of online retailers and personal friends. Changing it would only waste a lot of time for no real reason. For a free e-mail service, it is perfectly adequate.

Re:Who cares?

[xcomm]

Greetings from an other old European German.

Maybe the world is more and more thinking this way if G W Bush will get reinstalled with its Junta duo Pentagon, Halliburton, M$, Diebold & Co.. Till now we use a lot of US stuff especially in IT and don't think about. Mostly we more tend to think more about Open Source vs. propritary software. But you should be really careful, as you are loosing the credit from the last 50 years as far as it could be. Wake up and elect a wiser (wo)man!!!

(BTW: I prefer GNOME over KDE.)

Not chronological

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got an account from 1998 that starts with a and hasn't been upgraded. So it's neither chronological nor alphabetical. It probably just depends on what server your data is stored on when they go to migrate a batch of accounts.

Re:Not chronological

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine either, and it was created in 1997...

Re:Not chronological

[dncsky1530]

Back in 2000 MS started migrating the hotmail servers from freeBSD to windows. There had been previous delays in the migration so it could be possible that it depends on the server, of which MS had over 3500 to run hotmail.

But it shouldnt make much of a difference, I used to offer free email accounts to people on some domains and the account quota could be modified from a text field. But i doubt many people have any ideas on how hotmail is admined, it would be interesting to hear if anyone has any info.

Re:Not chronological

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine either, and it was created before the fall of the Berlin wall. Love, Anonymous Coward

Re:Not chronological

[RabidMonkey]

ditto here ... my accounts from back in the HoTMaiL days ... 1996 or so ... holy crap, I've had that account since grade 9. that'd be 1994/95 then I think.

man, I'm old.

Re:Not chronological

[irokitt]

Ditto, mine is from 1998 and still at 2mb. My Yahoo acccount has been at 100mb for a long time now, and I switched to that address. So Hotmail lost a bit of revenue from me already, I guess.

Re:Not chronological

[stevesliva]

Mine is from 1997. No upgrade.

Re:Not chronological

[Anonymous Coward]

im xavic_*****@hotmail.com and mine is upgraded, if that helps you guys figure it out. also, i made the account in either late 98 or early 99....

Re:Not chronological

[Anonymous Coward]

In 94 you were in grade 9 and you think you're old? LOL

Re:Not chronological

[csguy314]

Definitely not. I've had my account since high school (earlier than 98) and I've still got just 2 megs. And I'll still use my hotmail because I don't get spam, I've been sensible about (not) posting it ever since I got it. But GMail will become my main account from now on.

Re:Not chronological

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm old, and i need a life, i've had a hotmail account since it started in 93. I've been updated for over a month. i gather they go by server/account rather than crono. it would make more sense.

Re:Not chronological

[addbo]

Uhm...hotmail started in 1996...

http://www.dfj.com/files/viralmarketing.html

How'd you get an account before then?

Re:Not chronological

[Anonymous Coward]

The servers they migrated from FreeBSD to Win2K in 2000 were only the front end webservers, not where the user data was stored. The back-end was until recently, all Sun Solaris gear. Try again.

Several weeks ago

[stripmarkup]

I got my hotmail account in 1997, it was upgraded last month. I'd thought about giving it up several times but I can't because occasionally I receive email from friends I haven't seen in years. The main improvement is that now my inbox doesn't get full with spam and starts rejecting valid messages.

Re:Several weeks ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Use gotmail to forward your mail from hotmail to any other account.

Last time I checked...

[Wilkshake]

1GB is still bigger than 250mb.

Unless of course your living in a reality distortion field.

---

Re:Last time I checked...

[Linux is shit]

Yeah, but the main thing that hotmail has over gmail is that you can actually sign up for an account, which makes it 100% more usable.

Re:Last time I checked...

[ggvaidya]

Actually, in the reality distortion field, you only get 15 megs.

Re:Last time I checked...

[Deviate_X]

1GB is still bigger than 250mb.

Bah!!! 250 GB is bigger than 1GB.

Go! Maxtor MaXLine Plus II 250GB SATA 8MB Cache - (HD-021-MD) .........

Re:Last time I checked...

[MrHanky]

So why not get yourself a reality distortion field? They're cheap and reliable, and make 250 MB four times as much as 1 GB. That's 14 GB!

Hotmail stil has some uses

[NIK282000]

I use hotmail as moy spam collector, any time it says "Enter email" they get a hot mail and i keep my gmail squeeky clean. As for 250mb, i think M$ is just being cheap again, for a global monoply they have a pretty bad mail service.

Re:Hotmail stil has some uses

[ThisNukes4u]

I use my gmail for all the "Enter email" signups on websites, and all the spam goes right to the spam filter, so my real mail still stays squeaky clean.

Re:Hotmail stil has some uses

[Karamchand]

You might want to be interested in services like Spamgourmet and Jetable. Really helpful and even more comfortable than to log into hotmail just for some registration email.

Re:Hotmail stil has some uses

[the_2nd_coming]

250 MB is fine for me. I get my hotmail through my mail client (Entourage on OS X) so adding space to it means that I can keep messages longer and do not have to worry about high traffic.

and with the spam filtering on Entourage, I can keep my inbox on my hotmail clean because I automatically junk anything that is not in my contacts list. the only junk I get now is when some one spoofs my email address and it get through.

Re:Hotmail stil has some uses

[jsc19702]

I used Hotmail as my spam collector, I just opened an account and I got spam. No work needed!

Re:Hotmail stil has some uses

[mantera]

M$ is just being cheap again, for a global monoply they have a pretty bad mail service

Actually, on the contrary, the badness of their mail service proves and is very consistent with why a monopoly is bad. Microsoft did not show me that they had a true intention to improve hotmail for the user, and in fact, having been a user of hotmail since 97, my user experience had declined EVERYTIME microsoft made a revision to it; everytime they revised it it increased the amount of advertisement and revenue-making visuals I was exposed to, and made it harder for me to find and use the functions I need to easily use an email system. They bought a most popular webmail service and then unashamedly milked it. They also unashamedly used their OS monopoly to leverage it further.

It's entirely consistent with the theory that monopoly is bad because until they faced competition from google they did not seem intending to offer any significant improvements.

Re:Hotmail stil has some uses

[Ira Sponsible]

This is what my shit list is for. Someone pisses me off, I find out who they are, get their email addy (and other relevant useful infos necessary for reg sites), jot the info in cryptopad for later use. And then I periodically sign up for as much spam-generating crap as I can find in ten minutes or so using that email address.

email forwarder??

[pdangel]

Now if they could only join us in the 21st Century and add email forwarding.... ...then I could just check me gmail account and not have to worry about mail box size on Hotmail.

Re:email forwarder??

[emil.ede]

And microsoft would like to make it easier for you to switch to gmail because...?

Re:email forwarder??

[Reaper9889]

Its actually not an quistion about adding the feature but about readding it. Some time ago I used 2 different hotmail accounts and had one forward to the other. But that feature got removed...

Re:email forwarder??

[Mercaptan]

So that they can make no money at all off the advertising?

more spam

[IAR80]

Swell! More spam can fit in.

Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[MadMorf]

...for the Spam.

Seriously, I had a Hotmail account, which I used for testing purposes only. Never, ever gave the address out for any reason, and that thing was inundated with crap every single day...

My theory is that MS sells the user list to spammers...

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[signore pablo]

the spam filters work quite well actually. Go into your options (top right hand corner) click on mail, then junk email protection, then junk email filter and select "enhanced". This adds a junk mail folder and it works pretty well. Sometimes 1 message gets through to my inbox, but it works much better than on the low setting.

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[ch3ch2oh]

> My theory is that MS sells the user list to spammers...

this is so preposteous it's amusing. complain all you want about MS business practices, but they are doing a lot to prevent spam, and will likely do more in the future. spam costs them a fortune - far more then they could ever make selling lists to people hawking V!AGr4

hotmail gets spam because it's home to so many addresses that generating messages to random names will get a lot of hits.

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[aardvarkjoe]

Hotmail seems to have changed their spam filtering lately for the worse. It used to be that I would get perhaps one spam every day or two that wasn't caught by the filters. Now, I don't get any spam in my inbox, but there are false positives -- so I have to look through the junk mail folder for messages that I want. Sort of defeats the purpose of filtering in the first place, if I still have to read them.

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[Haydn Fenton]

I've never had that problem, but then I haven't used hotmail recently, and when I used to, I signed up to lots of stuff so I wouldn't be able to tell anyway.
However, AOL is absolutely fucking terrible for this, ALL of my screennames (and therefore email addresses) have never been used, at all. I never use them since I have two websites of my own, gmail, and throw-away-emails/hotmail for anything I think will spam me.. anyway, ALL of these AOL emails (of which 2 are almost completely unguessable) frequently get all kinds of spam..

Yours, The anonymous coward to doesn't want to admit to using AOL.

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[LordOfYourPants]

"spam costs them a fortune - far more then they could ever make selling lists to people hawking V!AGr4"

Of all the things I've ever expected to see on slashdot, my hotmail password wasn't one of them!

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[pr0c]

Over the years i've opened a few accounts with alternating letters and numbers just to get by a registration somewhere. Each of those accounts received spam in the first few days... Some of them I _never_ distirbuted at all..

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[Haydn Fenton]

Oh well.. so much for the anonyminity, forgot to hit the 'post anonymously' button. Fuck it... I use AOL, flame me.

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[Anonymous Coward]

Haydn Fenton wrote... Yours, The anonymous coward to doesn't want to admit to using AOL.

Oops, look like you forgot to click the anonymous box :-)

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's strange, I've had a hotmail account for over a year and never gotten any spam in it. It's probably the fault of wherever you registered or something.

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago, I had been assigned some earthlink email addresses that I didn't even know existed - apparently charter communications gave these to me with my cable service, but never informed me. Last year, I got a letter in the mail about how they would cease providing me earthlink email service - and listed my 5 email addresses. Out of curiosity, I logged on, and found that all five of them had been spammed to capacity within 7 months (10mb storage). All my addresses were DDUONG(first initial, last name) with random numbers after it - so clearly a name generator would not be able to generate this. Some food for thought.

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[Chrispy1000000 the 2]

Today, another user was perma-moded to negative one.
Tis' a sad sad day. ;)

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[pr0c]

Some of them I _NEVER_ used, as said in my message, not even for registration...

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[squall14716]

You use AOHell? My sympathies.

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are clearly lying, dumbfuck.

Re:Hotmail users need all that extra space...

[TykeClone]

Didn't some employee of AOL get busted this summer for selling 1 million (insert Dr Evil laugh here) e-mail addresses to spammers?

How do you know?

[stephenMF]

How do you know when your account was created? I'd like to find the date for mine.

Re:How do you know?

[I don't want to spen]

I saved the 'welcome' email for exactly this reason. And when I checked it today, it said 'this message can not be located'! I know it was Dec 2, but it doesn't tell me which year!!

Re:How do you know?

[sridev]

If you had GMail, you could just look for the oldest mail in your inbox - the 'Welcome to GMail' mail since you don't delete mails.

If you have Hotmail, well - life sucks!

Frames

[signore pablo]

My biggest pet peave other than space with hotmail is the link system.. it opens new links in a new window but within another frame. It would be nice if there was an option in the settings to turn this "feature" off.

Re:Frames

[Yewbert]

My biggest pet peave other than space with hotmail is the link system.. it opens new links in a new window but within another frame. It would be nice if there was an option in the settings to turn this "feature" off.

YES! Mod parent up! I can't tell you how many times I've had to take a long and circuitous route to get back to a directly linked page that, for example, requires cookies, 'cos it seems as if those framed pages of Hotmail's screw up cookie usage. (Or, maybe, data sent through the URL, or some other kinds of non-basic transactions, I dunno, . . .) One example, since I may not be describing it right: I have a 'wish list' of used CDs on file at Djangos.com. Djangos sends me an email when one arrives in stock, and I hit the link to buy it. When I get around to viewing my shopping cart and trying to pay, if I'm still in that *&$#^%$damn Hotmail-framed window, the transaction will fail every time. Highly annoying.

But, anyway, to get back a little closer to the topic at hand - my oldest Hotmail account (from way before MS bought 'em) got upgraded to 250MB in early August.

Re:Frames

[aardvarkjoe]

Opera and Firefox both have ways of 'maximizing' a frame so that it's no longer under Hotmail's evil influence. That's the first thing I do when going to an outside link, because even if it's not necessary, I still don't like having the stupid Hotmail banner on top of the pages.

Re:Frames

[Savves]

for HTML messages with linked texts, clicking on "Content-Type: text/plain" on your message header, with advanced headers enabled(options>mail display settings>message headers>advanced), will open the message in a new window, still within the stupid hotmail frame. but this time around, the links are directed directly to the real URL's, so right clicking on the links>open in new window/tab will send you to that page, sans the frames.

Re:Frames

[drawfour]

What I hate is that the URL for that link starts with "http://64.4.26.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=76 0eb5c704482c89615384e10c7d14bd&lat=1096145471&hm__ _action=" and the URL after the "action=" is a mangled (escaped) version of the URL. This means that I cannot verify that the URL is what I expect. This is even more annoying than the frames (but obviously if they got rid of the frames, this would go away too because it could open the URL in a new window).

Re:Frames

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not so bad. You go -right click in the frame -This Frame -Show Only This Frame.

What's really annoying is this "link has expired" message. What a concept.

Am I...?

[__aafkqj3628]

Am I the only one who still uses POP3 or IMAP?

On another note, can someone enlighten me as to why they are upgrading the accounts so slowly? Shouldn't it be a quick and easy scripted task (unless they're editing the records one at a time)?

Re:Am I...?

[MadMorf]

On another note, can someone enlighten me as to why they are upgrading the accounts so slowly? Shouldn't it be a quick and easy scripted task (unless they're editing the records one at a time)?

If they were using Exchange, actually probably any email system, it's just a matter of changing the global quota settings...A 5 second job...

But, you've got to have the extra storage in place to handle the new demand...They're probably adding drives to the SAN...

Re:Am I...?

[lukewarmfusion]

The University I went to was moving away from POP3 and IMAP... by the time I graduated, incoming freshmen were instructed to use Webmail as their email client. The idea is that it's a consistent interface, doesn't require any configuration to use, and the security can be improved via SSL.

Since my business is web application development, I see a lot of the benefits. There have also been quite a few articles on Slashdot about web applications supplanting standalone versions...

Re:Am I...?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On another note, can someone enlighten me as to why they are upgrading the accounts so slowly? Shouldn't it be a quick and easy scripted task (unless they're editing the records one at a time)?

Well, I used to run this free email service[1] so I have some insights here.

The service is database-backed, with a normal CGI/mod_perl front end, so you might think that all upgrades would be instantaneous, and for many types of upgrades this is indeed the case.

However, it's not always so straightforward. Firstly, you've got the issue of multiple webservers, which have to be upgraded essentially by hand, and that takes some time.

More seriously, you may need to run scripts to move data around. One example being we used to store the emails themselves in the SQL database, but we soon realised that was a stupid thing to do and we moved to a NFS/IMAP solution for the mail, with the metadata only stored in the database. Because of the sheer volume of data involved we had to migrate each account individually. The strategy we used was to store a "migrated" flag with the user, and when they logged in first time since migration started, we would migrate their email (the process took up to 60 seconds per user depending on the amount of mail they had). In addition, we had a background process running which migrated unmigrated accounts one at a time. The whole process took several weeks to complete.

Another massive migration for us was the original migration of the code from Lotus Notes (true!) to database + mod_perl. This was horrible because it took ages to export the mail from Notes, so we had to maintain essentially two separate systems with a common front end. The custom-designed Apache front end decided whether the user was on the "old" system or the "new" system and redirected requests accordingly. Yuck.

Now I understand that Hotmail isn't the best architected system in the world. Looking at the URLs, it seems to me that each person has a "home" server, and so it's quite possible that sysadmins are now patiently upgrading each server by hand, in the process increasing the storage for that group of users. I don't envy them.

Rich.

[1] Not anymore, so don't blame me for their current failings!

Re:Am I...?

[SenseiLeNoir]

Yeah i use IMAP too, coz i have my cellphone, COmputer, Laptop, and mail2web accessing the same account, with folders and all.

Nothign beast pure IMAP for speed!

and if u need web access..Try Mail 2 Web (mail2web.com) to treat your POP3 and IMAP as a web account.

Re:Am I...?

[Malc]

Nah, it's not just you. In fact, I use SMTP followed by either POP3 or IMAP depending on which computer I use. I use Yahoo though and their mail forwarding service.

Re:Am I...?

[Anonymous Coward]

uhhh... POP3S? IMAPS?

Re:Am I...?

[lukewarmfusion]

Implementing email client security protocols over 15 platforms, each with at least a couple of different email clients, is much more difficult than forced SSL on a website.

As with most things in this industry, there are many different ways to do something...

Re:Am I...?

[almostmanda]

I use Hotmail Popper to put my hotmail in Thunderbird with all of my other email. Mostly because I can't stand the hotmail interface and slooooooowness. That counts, right? And, I'm guessing that since Microsoft seems to break something everytime they try to make something better, they're just trying to keep the complaint calls to a minimum.

Re:Am I...?

[BenjyD]

But I've yet to see a webmail interface that can match an imap client for speed and ease of use (haven't used gmail yet, though). The Outlook web access, for example, is truly terrible - slow and fiddly.
Surely they could just only run an imaps server, thereby enforcing the use of SSL connections.

Re:Am I...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its posts like these that make me wish there was a score of "6", just so super-useful posts like this get a little extra recognition.

Re:Am I...?

[__aafkqj3628]

If they were using Exchange, actually probably any email system, it's just a matter of changing the global quota settings...A 5 second job.

Aren't they still using Solaris in the background there (the legacy cgi scripts are a dead giveaway of something fishy).

But, you've got to have the extra storage in place to handle the new demand...They're probably adding drives to the SAN...

But surely the demand won't be instantaneous (how much inbound emails do they have to reject because of account limits? Or how quickly will their users be able to get 250MB of email into their accounts?). Besides, knowing Hotmail's data integrity record, they're probably just waiting on the IDE controller cards.

Re:Am I...?

[__aafkqj3628]

The idea is that it's a consistent interface, doesn't require any configuration to use, and the security can be improved via SSL.

Configuration and security is a plus, but there are definite problems with the power and functionality of them. The critical problem for me is consolidation - I have five regular-use email accounts, using five different webmail interfaces, all supporting different features, different options, different contacts (etc.) is not my idea of "benefits."

Re:Am I...?

[__aafkqj3628]

haven't used gmail yet, though

You're not missing much...
In terms of OWA, I would place it marginally better, but only because it doesn't look too nasty on non-IE browsers (the slow and fiddy remains).
It's 'features' are nothing to be amazed at either (threading, oooo, there's an original idea) and are drastically lacking.

Re:Am I...?

[jcuervo]

Now I understand that Hotmail isn't the best architected system in the world. Looking at the URLs, it seems to me that each person has a "home" server, and so it's quite possible that sysadmins are now patiently upgrading each server by hand, in the process increasing the storage for that group of users. I don't envy them.

Having seperate servers for groups of users seems like an appropriate thing to do. Why is that a bad thing?

Re:Am I...?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Having seperate servers for groups of users seems like an appropriate thing to do. Why is that a bad thing?

I guess the answer would be: why do that? It just multiplies the administration overhead by the number of these servers.

The alternative is a central database (probably a clustered database if you have an absolutely huge client population, but in the common case it really is just the one database server). All changes occur in one place exactly.

Rich.

How's that news?

[arhar]

I had my free account upgraded for about two months now.. but then again, I created my account in '97 so I guess they do go in chronological order.

Re:How's that news?

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

I agree, I've had my hotmail account upped to 250MB at least a month ago, maybe closer to two. I also have had the account since the creation of the internet (thanks Al Gore!).

Of course, any news that has to do with Microsoft doing something well/nice/good takes a very long time to make it to this MS-Hater forum. (this will be proved by someone marking this post as flamebait or troll, wait and see!)

Spam filters filter hotmail?

[Anonymous Coward]

A group of students created a hotmail account so they could all use the same email for their project. When they tried to send reports to their professors, the mail didn't get through. Do you think they were the victim of the school's spam filter just because they were on hotmail?

HotFS

[anandpur]

Time to start work on HoTMaiL file system, but we need 4 HoTMaiL account for 1GB filesystem
http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-files ystem/gmail-filesystem.html/

Not soo fast.....

[Lord Haha]

I have a hotmail account from the same month, and it hasn't been updated yet....

I only keep it because I use msn messenger a fair amount (through trillian or gaim of course)

Re:Not soo fast.....

[tsalem]

I have a hotmail account from the same month, and it hasn't been updated yet.... I only keep it because I use msn messenger a fair amount (through trillian or gaim of course)
You can sign up for an MSN passport with whatever email you use, and it'll work with MSN Messenger (Trillian, Gaim, Kopete, etc.) http://www.passport.net/

not sure what order they're doing it in

[drgroove]

My acct is from '97, and it's still @ 2MB... not sure if they're doing these chronologically, but that's just based on your acct being from '99 vs. mine from '97. Maybe they're going alphabetically? My acct starts w/ an 'f', what does your begin w/ ?

Still, regardless, I've already moved all of my contacts to GMail, and have basically stopped using my Hotmail acct; been planning on letting it die off before the end of the year, once i'm certain that all of my contacts are sending email to my GMail acct.

Re:not sure what order they're doing it in

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got an account starting with 'sr' which hasn't been upgraded. Don't know when I got it, but probably 1997/98.

Re:not sure what order they're doing it in

[maximilln]

My account was just upgraded today. I've had it since '96.

Re:not sure what order they're doing it in

[Evets]

I have an account from ~'95 that is still at 2mb. Maybe they are doing the pre-Microsoft ones last.

Re:not sure what order they're doing it in

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't remember what year but it was before MS bought hotmail... and still 2MB

Re:not sure what order they're doing it in

[bobstevens_took_my_n]

Mine is pre-Microsoft and starts with a t and is upgraded. This leads me to believe it's not alphabetical.

Re:not sure what order they're doing it in

[jcuervo]

Mine starts with 'xy', and it got upgraded a long time ago.

Re:not sure what order they're doing it in

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a pre microsft 3 letter account that I have had since the begining of hotmails exsistence. I have had 250 megs for months

Re:Well it is not all about space

[vivekg]

It is not all about space. Hotmail is old service and this email id is known to many of friends. So you need to keep this id for some time. But main problems are:
Slow working
Large Advertisements
No keyboard shortcuts
and so on ....

Bottom line: switch to GMAIL (read as get gmail invitation)

hotmail?

[Coneasfast]

who here really uses hotmail as their primary account? ever since MS took over they have been the worst email service ever. eg, when you click on a link, it opens with a hotmail frame.

my teacher used it to send homework to our class, it wouldn't work because it only allows a maximum of 1 mass mailings.

do people not know about other options such as yahoo? or do people don't care?

Re:hotmail?

[copperheadclgp]

Ironic, since I just dumped Hotmail, which I had foolishly used as my primary address for everything from business to pleasure, for Yahoo. I had the pay option. They deleted my emails and flooded me with spam. SHould have done it years ago.

Re:hotmail?

[hexMonkey]

my teacher used it to send homework to our class, it wouldn't work because it only allows a maximum of 1 mass mailings.

My English teacher tried sending us notes through her hotmail to the class.
I got an empty zip to my gmail account,
so it was either Hotmail, Gmail or my teacher, so who dunnit?

Re:hotmail?

[TykeClone]

No offense, but anyone using a yahoo, aol, hotmail, or any other free mail account for business should get their own domain and get e-mail service to go with it. Heck, just forward that e-mail to your free account.

What's the first thing you think when someone hands you a business card that says "brxs55@aol.com" - your estimation of them (and by proxy, their business) goes down.

I know why some people do that - AOL because of numerous access numbers around the country, the others because you can log in from any browser. I'm just saying that if you're doing business, act like it and get an e-mail address that doesn't scream newbie.

the geek factor

[PerlDudeXL]

I would have never considerd a webmail account for daily use, but with Gmail its something different.
I don't know why, but the recent pro/contra Gmail discussion appeared interesting and I wanted to give it a try.

Hotmail and most other webmail providers lack a "geek factor".

Email blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

What good is the extra space if they refuse to deliver messages?

I routinely have messages never get delivered because hotmail apparently thinks they are spam. Yet they also don't deliver them to the junk mail filter (despite the configuration option to support this).

And like gmail, they refuse to allow you to open messages in a new browser window. What the hell is up with that? I expect that kind of poor user interface from Hotmail, but what is gmail's problem? Don't they know that 'real users' use multiple windows?

All I use my Hotmail account for

[Dorsai65]

is as a 'spam magnet'. If an online form demands an email address, hotmail it is. I check once a week or so, mark everything as junk, and I'm done :-)

Chronological order??

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had my account since 1996 - it hasn't yet been upgraded so if the upgrades are occuring in chronological order, it's a chronology I'm not familiar with.

I love my Hotmail account...

[avalys]

LinuxWorks@hotmail.com :)

Still at two megs, though. Not that I use it for anything anymore...

Re:I love my Hotmail account...

[Staos]

Maybe MSN doesn't like your user name.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Don't forget that there are millions of people out there that are either happy with their Hotmail accounts and/or who would be greatly inconvenienced by abandoning those accounts altogether.

I have both a Hotmail account and a Gmail one. My Hotmail one dates back to 1996 (maybe 1995), definitely before the date that the service was acquired by Microsoft.

My Gmail account is maybe six months old. Which do I prefer using? Well, for reasons other than the account size (ie, the superior filtering, the unlimited [accountname]+[anythingyouwanttoputhere]@gmail.com aliases, the searching, the labelling as opposed to foldering approach, etc) but there's no way in hell that I'm going to abandoning my Hotmail account anytime soon.

Why? Well an eight (nine?) year-old email address has been the primary method of email communication for friends, family and others that want to contact me. If I were to abandon that email address, even after notifying everyone that I could think of who would want to send me an email, then I'm sure that there would be some messages that wouldn't get to me as intended.

And even if I could guarantee that all personal communication would suddenly come to my Gmail account, I'd still keep the Hotmail one, if only for site registrations, etc, that one day might lead to spam.

Does Hotmail compare well to Gmail? No. Is Microsoft increasing the size limit on Hotmail accounts a "me too" move? Yes. Does that mean that Hotmail is now redundant. No, not for me, not for millions of others.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the obvious...

[FooAtWFU]

Doesn't Hotmail let you forward your mail somewhere else? Couldn't you forward it to your Gmail account? Or is this a premium service?

Re:Thanks for pointing out the obvious...

[deathazre]

there are also millions of people out there who use hotmail as a this-place-i'm-signing-up-at-could-spam-me-so-I'll -use-a-different-email thing.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the obvious...

[Myrmi]

The unlimited [accountname]+[anythingyouwanttoputhere]@gmail.com aliases You can do that? Tell me more!

Re:Thanks for pointing out the obvious...

[mr_mozz]

From here

Username handling

Gmail allows usernames of between 6 and 30 characters. The only characters that can be used are letters, numbers, and periods (.). An unofficial feature of username handling seems to be that periods do not actually matter when resolving addresses. What this means is that signing up for the account foobar@gmail.com allows one to receive mail sent to the accounts: foo.bar@gmail.com, f.o.o.b.a.r@gmail.com, etc. Additionally, one is also allowed to receive mail sent to accounts of the form: foo.bar+bas@gmail.com where bas could be any string. This would allow for different aliases to be used when signing up for different services and then being able to easily filter them. /

Re:Thanks for pointing out the obvious...

[tepples]

Hotmail and many other free web mail providers want you to view their ads, not just forward all mail to another account. A Hotmail user can make a filter to file messages in a given folder but cannot make a filter to automatically send a message to another address.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. That's amazing. Most people I know have to change e-mail accounts because of SPAM problems once every couple of years.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the obvious...

[AnyoneEB]

IIRC, that's part of the standard for e-mail addresses. Every email service is supposed to allow you to do username+otherjunk@example.com. Of course, an intelligent spammer could just remove the part after the + and your filtering wouldn't work. (Unless you automatically deleted all messages without a +)

On the other hand, I did not know you could put periods anywhere in the address. That's nice to know.

Re:Thanks for pointing out the obvious...

[stoborrobots]

and the dumb spammers remove the part before the +...

I subscrible to mailing lists as randomletters+mailinglistname@mydomain.net and receive spam to mailinglistname@mydomain.net... I actually suspect that it's simplistic mail-to-web archiving tools, which htmlize the email and convert the addresses to mailto: links which are actually to blame.

Still, it's kinda amusing to see spam to ridiculous addresses which are obviously harvested...

Do you have any idea...

[boffy_b]

...how much fish they have to feed each mnemonic monkey to increase its capacity to 250MB.

I know this is /. but cut Microsoft some slack, people!

THANK YOU GMAIL FANBOY

[Anonymous Coward]

now please return to sticking your ipod in your asshole.

Nope

[Viceice]

My account is from 1997, and it's still at 2mb. Maybe they are shifting based on server or disc array or something.

Not chronological

[Sediyama]

I have a Hotmail account since 1997 and my account still with only 2Mb of space.

And I won`t back to hotmail even if there is 10Gb of space, gmail r0x!

Microsoft sending their own spam....

[ActionJesus]

I have a hotmail, yahoo and g-mail account. The yahoo account is my "primary" fake address, and gets a ton of spam, but most is filtered. The g-mail is new, and hasnt got any spam... yet. However, the hotmail one, which I hardly ever use, still gets spam in the main inbox.

The sender? MS. Every week they send me an email telling me how theyve "upgraded their fantastic service". I dont WANT these letters! I dont care! Its spam!

But of course, you cant block the sender... because its MS. And these are "important announcements". Shut up and just let me use my damn mail account. If not, im off to google.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Just another guess....

[LordOfYourPants]

Maybe it's based on the proportion of time that your account spends being near the 2MB mark compared to low volume users? The hope being that you'll get so tired of waiting that you'll bite the bullet and just buy a 2 gig account instead of waiting for the upgrade.

Again, just a guess...

Not by date of creation

[Metroid72]

I have a 1997 account and still have the 2MB. I don't think they're going by that. Besides, it probably goes by server.

Big Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

My Big Problem with Hotmail back in the day was that I received numerous spams on the account almost immediately after creating it. This is without using the address at all yet. Even if that started by people trying random email addresses, it's still obviously a problem with Hotmail addresses.

A scarier problem is that the morning after I signed up for paying my credit card online I received my first "phishing" scam e-mail to the address I used when signing up. Makes you wonder who is intercepting those important and confidential communications.

Mine is from 1998..

[sridev]

.. and still 2 MB - and they count spam in the total size of your account!!

Only reason I still have it is because this was my first web e-mail account and too many people have the address.

Good to see GMail forcing others to upgrade :)

I've had 250 for months now

[Jedbro]

Wierd, my account dates back to 1995, and I got an e-mail about the storage about 3 months ago, and since then had 250megs.

Unfortunatly hotmail sucks, and is too slow.
O'well. Anyone want my account?

Re:I've had 250 for months now

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes please!

Re:I've had 250 for months now

[LordoftheFrings]

I'll take it

They call it "httpmail".

[David M. Andersen]

Yeah. It's called "httpmail" and uses WebDAV. More information can be found here and here.

Maybe they'll add an extension for Mozilla/Thunderbird one of these days.

Quick Question

[c_spencer100]

If gmail hadn't been introduced, and yahoo hadn't gotten the increase in popularity (even more so than it already had) over the last year like it did, do you think MSN would have still done this ? And they wonder why we complain about monopolies so much...

But why hotmail or even spymac?

[SySOvErRiDe]

I stick with gmail because of what googling is good for, searching my messages. I've imported all of my messages from the past four years, and I've only filled up a mere 100mb. I plan to use gmail for a very very long time, and I expect google to last pretty much forever. The searching, hotmail doesn't offer that, and I don't think spymac offers that either. Also the ads, there's no small advertising that gets attached to the bottom of the emails like hotmail does it. And those worries about privacy, I trust google more that microsoft hotmail or some other obscure one like spymac.

Mine is bigger than yours!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine is 1GB, yours is just 250mb!!

Gmail rules...

old news

[illuminatedwax]

This happened months ago on my account. I shoulda took a picture of it and sent it in. I think they're upgrading in chronological order (I got mine way back in '97).

--Stephen

Dai.ly.info

[blackest_k]

boy am I sick of seeing that one!
effective spam filtering would be more use than the space
maybe one day hotmail will actually let users ban domains more effectively

at the moment they give the choice of
randomusername@randomletters.foo.com
or
*@ra ndomletters.foo.com
and
*@*.foo.com
is whats needed for this one and they will not let me block it

at least hotmail popper lets me use thunderbird as a mail client instead of outlook.

Hotmail pages are pigs

[ArbitraryConstant]

You're 100% right. Hotmail pages contain a lot of content that doesn't just take a long time to transfer, it takes a long time to render and eats a lot of CPU. Fine on a P4 sitting on a cable modem, but you can't assume that. Gmail requires a newer browser, which is a software upgrade.

Also, the hotmail interface is stupid. It's like using a plastic spork. The spam filtering sucks. My hotmail account is now used only when I need to sign up for something. I log in, clear out all the junk (it fills up in about a day), get the sign up message, and then leave it again.

Gmail is better in just about every way. The only thing I'd want is more encryption.

I have 6 invites. Contact me.

Re:Hotmail pages are pigs

[UranusReallyHertz]

I always wondered why the hell Hotmail's spam filtering sucks so bad when they are in a unique position to be able to stop it. If the same message is being sent to say a thousand or 100,000 people, you can be pretty sure its spam and just block it. They could even do this retroactively after monitoring over a period of days.

Re:Hotmail pages are pigs

[snilloc]

Hotmail has a 'report junk' feature, but it doesn't seem to learn from the junk I feed it. I keep getting the same crap in my inbox, and false positives in my junk folder.

It's not in Chronological Order

[reagank]

I've had mine since 1997, and it's still at 2 MB

not chronological

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had my account since 1998, and I'm still at 2mb....

You don't need hotmail for MSN

[boffy_b]

I personally use my .tk address, and have also used hotpop.com and others. You just need to go to passport.com and attach your address to a passport. Using GAIM or the like you could even be logged onto both accounts at the same time to give everyone your new address.

Starts....

[NoMercy]

I got my 250Mb quota a month ago :)

Definately better than 1Mb, and constantly almost maxing out if one spam comes in with images attached.

Gmail Problems

[darkmeridian]

Hotmail has slow service, and it's interface still has problems. However, it works for me while Gmail does not.

I mean this in a literal fashion. I use Firefox 1.0PR with Kerio Personal Firewall 4.1.0 and Gmail does not work. The code for the easy interface apparently is really complicated and just doesn't work. It doesn't work in IE, either.

Hmm... Anyone else see this problem? Since Gmail is experimental, google searching has been fruitless.

Re:Gmail Problems

[stanjef1]

I use Gmail with Firefoc 1.0PR and ZoneAlarm Pro, and I haven't had a single problem in the last few months. I originally had problems when I had cookies disabled, but when I allowed them, the problem was solved. Does that help?

Re:Gmail Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Disable the kerio web filtering -pretty useless if you stick with firefox, anyway- and everything will go smooth and by the numbers.

Microsoft deleted my e-mails!

[Blaskowicz]

They delete every older-than-30-days mail. I found out about this when I came back home after six weeks without net access, my account was even "disabled".
I lost old personnal e-mails I wanted to keep, login information to some forums and Ebay, the key for Free AVG (but I got another on www.serials.ws ;)), etc.

I don't care about the 2MB limit (text isn't that heavy!), deleting my e-mail is far worse !

Re:Microsoft deleted my e-mails!

[Blaskowicz]

Correction : Copies of sent messages are destroyed after 30 days. Regular shouldn't be deleted but if you don't connect for 30 days then you're fucked.

All the invites are gone thanks for playing

[pbranes]

Have a nice day.

Re:Well it is not all about space

[almostmanda]

Let's not forget the monthly "try msn messenger and the msn network and upgrade your account!!!" Microsoft spam that you're unable to block or filter out.

GMail

[Space_Soldier]

Thank you, but no thank you! I got GMail.

MS Hotmail seriously fucked me over multiple times

[Karma Star]

First, are they still deleting "Sent Messages" after 30 days? I didn't know this, and I've lost a few hundred messages that I would have liked to keep.

But, more importantly, if you had upgraded your Hotmail service in the past to Hotmail Plus through MS Passport and you a) changed your credit card number and b) let your account lapse, you're account will be marked as locked and you will NEVER be able to upgrade it again. This occurs when MS tries to autobill you for another year of Hotmail Plus and the card comes up as invalid. I contacted MS about this through their email team, and they basically told me "Tough shit, go make another account."

I will post the response messages I got back from MS to this thread. They are complete cocksuckers. And no, THEY DON'T HAVE PHONE SUPPORT for Passport accounts. They'll take your money and do business with you online, but you'll never be able to call to them and complain...

sent

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

Re:sent

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I was wondering why someone with an @gmail.com address was looking for invites :p

have one.

[Anonymous Coward]

here: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-64bd41a8f3-665541d 044-50b825bee7

--Klar

Still wating for .Mac to catch up

[Mr Pippin]

Now, if .Mac will get a grip and increase their limits as well!

Text from support email I received

[Karma Star]

From: US_hmexst@css.one.microsoft.com
Subject: CSTxxxx41998ID - RE:get help with a problem not listed here
Date: August 10, 2004 10:00:08 AM EDT
To: john_doe@hotmail.com

Dear John,

Thank you for writing to us at MSN Extra Storage support. I apologize for delay in responding to your query.

I understand that you are unable to sign up for Extra Storage as your account is locked.

john, I have checked your Hotmail account and found that the MSN Extra Storage subscription was cancelled due to non-payment. The financial institution has declined to pay charges submitted to your credit card for this service. This may be due to an expiration date passing.

After the subscription was cancelled, the credit card number associated with this account has been removed and we do not have the ability to re-instate any MSN subscription on this account. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

You may create another Hotmail account with a different username and sign-up for MSN Extra Storage subscription on that new account.

This is to let you know that, currently you are a free Hotmail user of 2 MB storage space.

I am glad to inform you that, MSN is going to introduce the new plans by the end of July. Microsoft is diligently working to upgrade the service and you can expect the changes very soon.

For your information, MSN is going to offer 250 MB of storage space to your Inbox absolutely free. Please be assured that you would not be charged for the service. This is going to be free.

With the 250 MB storage space you will avail the following features mentioned below:

1. You will be able to send attachment up to 10 MB,

2. Anti-virus protection that both scan and cleans incoming and outgoing e-mail messages for viruses and worms,

3. Upon upgrade, enabling individual and shared calendaring.

Please accept our apology for any inconvenience this might have caused you. I hope the information that I have provided is helpful to you.

If you have any additional questions, please reply to this message. Please include any previous communication with us in your reply, so we can assist you better. We are available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

Your satisfaction with our service is very important to us. You will be receiving a survey in your e-mail in the next day or two. Please complete the survey and let us know how we are doing.

Sincerely,

Sandra
MSN Extra Storage Email support.

--- Original Message ---
From: john_doe@hotmail.com
To: Passport@css.one.microsoft.com
Sent: Sun Aug 8 10:07:55 PDT 2004
Subject: get help with a problem not listed here

SignInAddress : john_doe@hotmail.com
Country : US
PostalCode : 07030
Comments :
Submit : Send
CustomerName : john doe
UpdateCountry : false
CUBirthdate : 1x/0x/19xx
BrowserVersion :
OperatingSystem :
ErrorMessage : I cannot upgrade my hotmail account. I get the following error message:

***

We're sorry, we cannot continue this sign-up.

We're sorry, we cannot continue this sign-up. The billing account associated with the e-mail address that was entered is locked. To resolve this issue, contact customer support. For contact information, go to the Microsoft Billing Website at https://billing.microsoft.com, sign-in, if necessary, and then click Contact Support.

Please choose:

Return to MSN Hotmail

To contact customer support, go to the Microsoft Billing Website at https://billing.microsoft.com, sign-in, if necessary, and then click Contact Support.

***

I have updated my credit card information to no avail. Please fix this.

FirstName : john
LastName : doe
Region : New Jersey 23117

Great with Mozilla

[hexMonkey]

I've got hotmail set with Mozilla mail & pop3 and its great.

No waiting times for advertisements or pages to load and my mail gets put all on my system,
I can't remember actually browsing on hotmail's site this year.

And the new space.. I personally don't need it as my mail gets deleted from hotmail when grabbed.
So I in affect have a 120gig Email Account.

What I am interested in is if the sizelimit on attachments will be changed,
I hate not being able to send largish files.

Um...

[kermit1221]

Well, mine has been at 250Mb for at least a few weeks now. It starts with a 'd', and has been around since late '95, for those interested in chronological and/or alphabetical order.

You're confused...

[OS24Ever]

...This is hotmail, not .Mac. Steve Jobs reality distortion field only works with Apple related products.

Nothing here since 1997. Typical MS bullshit

[theolein]

I think it's bullshit. I've had my hotmail account since 1997 and there's been no change to my account. I think that the MSN shill quoted in the article as saying that the accounts are being upgraded from the oldest to the newest is simply lying. That's not the way MS or MSN works. The way they probably are doing it is giving it to new sign ups in order to get people away from Gmail, and simply ignoring the rest. It's very easy for them to say, "Oh, because there are so many millions of hotmail accounts, we missed that one"

Re:Nothing here since 1997. Typical MS bullshit

[Deviate_X]

Please read! it was speculation on the part of CowboyNeal that the accounts were being updated in chronological order.

Re:Nothing here since 1997. Typical MS bullshit

[irritant-1]

I checked my old hotmail account a fortnight ago and they had already been upgraded to 250mb. If my own memory serves me right I signed up for it in '97 or 98. I rarely use the thing. If they are willing to cut it down to 2mb on a whim then they are likely to do it again.

Re:Nothing here since 1997. Typical MS bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I've hade my hotmail since 1996 and have had my 250mb for a couple months now...

Re:Nothing here since 1997. Typical MS bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

PS:
I signed up when hotmail was owned by hotmail. Anyone remember those days?

Re:Nothing here since 1997. Typical MS bullshit

[cmacb]

I was going to say something like this. They've variously been promising this for months and at time even advertising that the 250M deal was already in place while at the same time offering storage upgrades for $20. I frankly don't think they have the disk space to support all their users at 250M. But we'll see. The more they hype this the worse they look next to Yahoo (who's rollout was overnight) and Gmail who's giving out invites faster than people can use them.

hahahahaha

[Duke Machesne]

offtopic as hell, but funny, so funny!

1999 *is* a newer account!

[ari_j]

Mine got upgraded almost a month ago, newb.

Re:1999 *is* a newer account!

[ravan_a]

1998 account here, still stuck with 2....wtf

Re:1999 *is* a newer account!

[ari_j]

I don't even know how to check when I got my account.

people CLAIM to hate hotmail but dont give it up

[MIcroswipe]

I offered to swap a gmail invite for an active hotmail account (with a password) at http://www.gmailswap.com/. No takers. If you cant kick the hotmail habit cold turkey then dont complain.
Instead of spam I get junk invites now. How many friends does google the think I have?

I've had one account upgraded for a month or more.

[DaedalusLogic]

One address I have that has been out since maybe 96 or 97 or before... at the latest 98 is upgraded.(Right before MS bought it, and it still ran on FreeBSD. It continued to do so for about a year after MS bought it I think.) The other account that I have from 98 or 99 isn't.

This upgrade started over a month ago. When one person notices it and bothers to submit... big deal... When MS says it's finished. That's the real reason to post some news. This upgrade was a reaction to changing market conditions and the deployment of such extra storage would be an interesting benchmark.

account since 1997.. no upgrade

[zorgaliscious]

i think its according to how much of an MS bitch you are... and to prove the point, of all my friends, the one who got the only upgrade is the MS faatic... yeesh

Passport

[hey]

Don't you have to get a MS Passport to have a Hotmail account. That's one of the main reasons I never got one.

I'm Not a Microsoft Shill...

[One Childish N00b]

...and nor do I play one on TV, but I'd rather use Hotmail than Gmail, too - I've got a Gmail account, but I hardly ever use it (except to email large files back and forth to myself when I'm going to want to use them in more than one place - and this is just till I replace my broken USB thumbdrive). It might have something to do with the way Gmail doesn't support Konqueror *at all*, while Hotmail will if I set the identifier to IE. Also, on my Windows machine, it's easier to check when a link to my Inbox is right there in MSN Messenger (yeah, yeah - Gaim's 1.0 now, I don't care - yeah, yeah - it loads up in IE, I still don't care).

Also, my main gripe with using it on my Linux box is the browser problem. I don't want to have to fire up a whole new program to check my non-techy gf's latest 'cute' chain-mail thing - I've frequently got half a dozen to a dozen apps running at once, I don't need extra shit taking up memory and real-estate. I also don't want to switch over to Firefox, so any webmail service that insists I stop using my favourite browser or clutter up my desktop with further junk is going to lose points. No-one's ever going to use 1Gb for email, and if Hotmail let me have a maximum attachment size of, say, 5Mb instead of 2, then I'd drop Gmail completely. It's overhyped, and I don't care if I'm "OMG M$ SHILL LUSER!!!" for saying so. When Google manage to support my favourite browser as well as 'TEH EVIL M$!!!" does, *then* I'll consider the switch.

I'm sorry for the rant, but when I first got Gmail a month ago I was hoping for 'The Holy Grail of Webmail', and all I got was a basic webmail with bigger pockets - And I couldn't even check it without opening up a whole new application, destroying the whole concept of webmail - it's bloody rediculous. My current box has 80Gb of space, I might as well just fire up KMail.

Anyway, excuse me, I've got to go reload my Hotmail tab - I have mail.

Re:I'm Not a Microsoft Shill...

[Lisandro]

Mod up. I don't know why must GMail be "browser compatible", but i can't fire it from Opera. Hence, i check my GMail account maybe twice a month, when i'm in the mood of running Mozilla.

Re:I'm Not a Microsoft Shill...

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird, can't comment, as all I get is a note saying something to the effect of "This brower is not supported, click here to continue" on Safari (the gf's crappy fruit) or Firefox.

Re:I'm Not a Microsoft Shill...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so you prefer hotmail because it works with your browser. fine. no, I'm not going to say you're playing into the hands of M$ and all that crap, but I must say that gmail is a superior service. The extra size is good for the future, but when you have at least 250 MB storage, you are probably fine.

Browser issues aside, gmail offers a much cleaner, simpler interface (I find hotmail's interface to be convoluted - sure you can do what you want if you already know exactly where all the links for it are, but trying to find something is aweful). Also, the conversation style organization for messages really come in handy when conversing with people back and forth. The spellchecker is much simpler and easier to use, even the settings are easier to tweak, plus it is much better suited for searching through mail (and also allows you to search the web easily).

As for the MSN messenger thing.....dont get me started on MSN messenger, but it is just as easy to bookmark gmail and put a link on the desktop or quicklaunch bar. Also it has the larger attachment support that even you find useful. The spam blockers I find are also much more effective. I stopped actively using my hotmail account long ago, switched to yahoo (which was clearly superior to hotmail) and now use gmail (even better). While I agree that it may make sense for you to use hotmail, I must argue that gmail is a superior service overall.

hotsnail

[Exter-C]

I often wonder why people still use hotmail.. some things just dont make logical sense.

Use your own webmail

[SunPin]

I'm shocked to see so many /.ers using a corporate promotional tool (hotmail, gmail, yohaa, etc.)

All my domains have their own web clients. It's not difficult at all. It's not expensive either.

Hotmail is a Roman bath and performs as efficiently as one.

Re:Use your own webmail

[tepples]

All my domains have their own web clients. It's not difficult at all.

Then please describe how to do this reliably on a typical residential dial-up account.

For people who use hotmail as a spam account....

[comrade009]

There is a much better solution: mailinator.net.

It works like this: you go register for a site, and you use any mailinator.net email. You then go to mailinator, which has already created the account, and login, without even using a password. This is the fastest mail client I have ever seen, the only downfall is that you can't sendmail.

But then again, why would you with a junk account?

Not chronological

[Anonymous Coward]

My account was created in 1996 and I still only have 100mb. In other news, I'm still waiting for them to get the bug working where you can't open attachments. (Every time you click on the attachment, it opens a hotmail login page)

I for one...

[jb.hl.com]

Will never go back to Hotmail.

It's crap, it's slow, it's ugly as sin and full of ads. Plus it's a portal to the IM network of sin...

Since August or so

[jintxo]

MY account has been 250 megs since AUgust or so, I thought everyone else's was too! Guess not...

No chronology here!

[sl0wp0is0n]

The account the screenshot is from is an old account - created August 1999 - so I guess they're upgrading the accounts in chronological order.

That's not true. My account was created in 1997 and it's still not upgraded. May be the accounts are being upgraded based on which server machine needs a reboot first ;) (you know how Windows is!)

Re:Well it is not all about space

[jvj24601]

Add to that

Stupid javascript-based links so that you can't read multiple messages if different tabs on Firefox.

More invites

[pearljam145]

Here are a few more invites Invite1 Invite2 Invite3 Invite4 Invite5

Re:More invites

[Anonymous Coward]

jdavis you fucking bottomfeeding son of a bitch, you supporting this gmail invite bullshit spam bullshit! argh!!

Re:More invites

[QuaZar666]

and here is a few more invites... Enjoy!

invite 1
invite 2
invite 3
invite 4
invite 5
invite 6

- Qua

It's not by chronological order

[__aailob1448]

I have had a hotmail account since 1995 and my inbox still has not changed to 250 Mb.

Hotmail eats incoming mail

[Rydain]

My husband and I really didn't care one way or the other until I won an auction for a spot on a wig commissioner's roster and my confirmation email never arrived. I obviously couldn't reply to an email I didn't receive, so I lost my spot. According to various complaints I read on Google, Hotmail has a reputation for delaying incoming mail or losing it entirely. To be fair, getting bumped was partially my fault for not following up in time, but that doesn't change the fact that an email service should not be randomly BALEETING incoming mail. This person is not a spammer and, to the best of my knowledge, does not share any IP blocks with spammers, so I doubt that was the problem, either.

We're currently using a Gmail account as our PayPal contact point instead. I just wish we would have switched over sooner.

gmail invites - first come, first serve

[lixlpixel]

well - i have much more invites than i'd ever need
get one for yourself @ http://fundisom.com/free-gmail.php...

and if you don't get one now - i'll add many more over time.
and if you manage to get one i'd be happy if you have a look at the ads on the page...
enjoy...

Still Not Upgraded

[M3wThr33]

I haven't used my account in a long ass time, but I log in (Have to re-activate it) and I'm still at 2MB.

Shouldn't there be a law against deleting my emails? That's crap. It cleared out everything!

250mb of storage

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean I can store even more of the V*aG~rA spam in my in-box?

Why so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did this take so long to do? Yahoo responded to Gmail's throwing of the Gauntlet months ago! Does this have anything to do with Yahoo using FreeBSD and MSN mainly using NT?

Re:Why so long?

[angrykeyboarder]

Are your sure they've not switched to Winblows w/IIS? Many features in Yahoo! Mail are only available to Internet Explorer users (which I find very odd).

The hotmail / spam myth

[peterpi]

I've had a hotmail account for years and years and years, and I've posted the address everywhere that's likely to get collected by spammers (like here: peterpimley@hotmail.com). But despite everybody saying otherwise, I just don't get spam.

Sure, I have a 'junk mail' folder that gets about 50 mails a day, but that doesn't come out of your 2(50)Mb, and it's a free service.

Could somebody tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Upgrades don't appear to be chronological order

[bigtallmofo]

I don't believe the upgrades are in chronological order. If so, they skipped me. My (still) 2 meg hotmail account is from mid-1997. Before a "my hotmail account is older than yours" flamewar erupts; I acknowledge that Hotmail was around for well over a year before I received an account. Anyway, I use my old Hotmail account for every non-important email that I want sent to me and it gets spammed like crazy but Hotmail only squeaks through maybe 4 false negatives per day. I use my GMail account for every important email that I want sent to me.

Why they did this for free.

[Anonymous Coward]

It must have cost no space, since nearly all accounts have the same emails, spam. :-)

Re:Well it is not all about space

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid javascript-based links so that you can't read multiple messages if different tabs on Firefox.

Ah, but you can. The Hotmail Tabs extension adds just what you're looking for. One more reason that Firefox is the best browser ever.

Checking your HotMail Inbox without logging in ...

[ffdixon]

Web-based e-mail is great,b ut all web-based e-mail systems -- HotMail, GMail, Yahoo Mail, etc -- suffer from one big problem: you have to manually login to check for new messages. GMail came out with a beta GMail watcher. But what's the choice for HotMail?

MSN Messenger tells you when you have new HotMail messages waiting, but it only gives the number of unread messages -- you still have to login to read them.

Check out the HotMail Watcher Klip from Serence (http://www.serence.com) if you want to monitor your HotMail account for new messages.

The HotMail Klip is an intelligent agent that runs in KlipFolio. KlipFolio an open platform for developing task-specific agents that can monitor remote data source for changes. Klips are scriptable with JavaScript. Anyone can write a Klip and share it with others.

The result is you don't have to manually login any more just to check for new HotMail messages. The Klip does all the authentication with Microsoft Passport, logs in on your behalf every half-our, uses WebDav to check your account, and tells you your new messages -- with a preview of the message.

For a screen shot, check out this post in our developer's forum. http://www.serence.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=391

Best of all, KlipFolio (and the HotMail Klip) are free for personal, non-commercial use. If anyone has feedback on how we can make the Klip better, please e-mail me (fdixon at serence dot com) or post to our forums.

Regards,... Fred

[Full discloser: I work at Serence on the sales side, selling KlipFolio to corporate customers to make money to ensure our developer's can keep enhancing KlipFolio for everyone.]

Chicks Dig GMail

[KB1GHC]

http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyimages/560.p ng
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyimages /001 _300/034.gif

Spam

[EGaming]

With 250, I'll have to delete all the spam that account gets only every other day!

Need to mod article "-1 Incorrect"!

[Anonymous Coward]

The account the screenshot is from is an old account - created August 1999 - so I guess they're upgrading the accounts in chronological order.

I have both new and old accounts. My oldest was created around 1996 and it is still 2MB. My newest was from August and that is still 2MB. Chronological order isn't correct. Either that or the guy's just editing that 250MB in.

Re:For people who use hotmail as a spam account...

[LegionX]

Or use sneakemail.

Re:Well it is not all about space

[Anonymous Coward]

I barely get those e-mails, maybe 3-4 times a year. I am sick of these slashdot grudges against Microsoft.

They've been doing this for a while already...

[RevAaron]

They've been doing this for a while already... My account was upgraded a month or two back. But then again, my account is pretty old- from 1996 IIRC. Which is the year Hotmail launched, again IIRC. Anyway, this explains why I've had a 250 MB account for a while, but a coworker of mine (who makes new accounts all the time to use for some reason) hasn't had any of hers upgraded yet. good to know.

Meanwhile Gmail is still 1 GB

[stud9920]

Meanwhile I've got 6 gmail invites. The 6 first responses criticizing George Bush's policy OR (to be fair play) telling me how he's not the most lousy US president post WWII America has known, will get an invite.

Re:Meanwhile Gmail is still 1 GB

[Mathiasdm]

I'd criticize him (I often do), but I don't feel like it.
I already have a gmail and a spymac account.

Anyways, nice way of handing out invites ;-)

Separation of revenue

[tepples]

It's funny, as I use the account as my MSN Messenger name, so you would think by logging into MSN Messenger (or any Passport site), I am in effect, PROVING I am not inactive.

Viewing the ads in MSN Messenger pays for the Passport authentication servers and the MSN Messenger servers but not for the Hotmail servers.

Re:Separation of revenue

[shufler]

What ads? http://amsn.sourceforge.net/

My account was upgraded.

[crashnbur]

I don't know when I created mine, but it was months if not a couple years before I graduated from high school in May 2000. Either way, the only benefit I expect to receive from this is the ability to enjoy longer intervals between checking Hotmail for useful emails, since now there's not as much danger of spam using all my space before I get to it again!

yes

[themusicgod1]

I lost shadows_of_ink@hotmail.com, a_lone_candle@hotmail.com and themusicgod1@hotmail.com. i gave up on hotmail, after that. which is a shame, for it was a pretty good deal before microsoft got involved.

Re:Well it is not all about space

[infonography]

ok, I will take that pepsi challenge. My gmail address is the same as this id, drop me a line there are I will give you an invite. Mods, Please don't mod this up, my karma is locked on Spiffy and this is open only to those who actually read the messages.

Just checked oldest hotmail - 2GB!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just check my oldest hotmail (and yes, I never bothered to sign-up for a slashdot acc't..) and it's showing 2GB of free space.. This is the acc't from pre-microsoft days.. 95-96ish?

See below (and no, they aren't photoshopped.. Second-oldest acc't is still at 2mb)

http://extra.stuffclub.org/hot/hotmail.jpg
http://extra.stuffclub.org/hot/hotmail2.jpg

Now if only this acc't hadn't been relegated to a spam-collecter years ago.. *grin*

1997 aged Account is not bumped up...

[skogs]

obviously not in chronological order...as I have been actively using mine since 1997 and mine still says 2MB.

Honestly, my hotmail account is my oldest and most useful account, one of the hangups of going to linux is that I can't use outlook express and its (beta) functionality with hotmail. Are there any linux or alternative choices for win32 codebase mail systems that can access hotmail accounts?

just curious

MyWay.com recently upgraded also

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's not nearly as popular as hotmail so it's not a front-page slashdot story, but I've noticed a few other email services here and there upgrading services in the wake of the gmail threat. My own, myway.com has gone from 3MB to 150MB per user. Still not 1GB, but certainly more than enough for what I plan to use it for.

So even if Gmail's business plan is terrible and the service eventually dies... it's having repercussions on other email carriers.

Not chronological...

[addbo]

I've had my account since November 1996... back before Microsoft had taken over... it was actually my first email account... it is STILL at 2MB...

POP3 / IMAP support

[freezin fat guy]

One of the things which has kept me with Yahoo throughout these wars is that my account is fully compatible with Evolution / Thunderbird / Look-Out / (insert favourite client here)...

I mostly use the web interface when away from my own computer so it's pretty handy.

I suspect, though, that GMail is going to revolutionize email handling to some degree and that we will soon see some GMail like features appearing in these other email clients.

Mine already has been...

[Leperous]

I must have registered ~1999, and I was given 250mb back in June...

Won't help me

[billstewart]

My cat had a Hotmail account relatively early on. Because they insist that you provide true information when signing up for an account, my cat provided correct information about herself. Unfortunately, after Microsoft bought out Hotmail, they developed the annoying Passport one-registration-system-to-rule-them-all login system, though old accounts continued to work for a while. Then the Feds passed some law about protecting the information of children on the web, which led to most online services banning access to anyone under 13. My cat was about 3 years old at the time, so her account got canned, and neither I nor she wanted to go through Passport to create a new account, so we switched to Yahoo or something.

These days I've got an account on Fastmail.fm, which is a really well-run free (with optional paid upgrades) mail system, and I mostly use dodgeit.com for more disposable website registrations and such.

August 99? That's NEW.

[solios]

I created mine in September of 1997. So there. :p

That was waaaay before the microsoft buyout, back when they had the animated globe and the login/password and pretty much nothing else on the front page. Much nicer back then, imo. And mysteriously upgraded to 250 megs of disk sometime last week, if memory serves.

Re:Well it is not all about space

[anthony_dipierro]

Or switch to Outlook Express for accessing your hotmail account. Fast working, no advertisements, and keyboard shortcuts.

Re:My Biggest Problem;possible fix

[etah52]

I have had similar problems with Gmail in Firefox on Windows. A work-around for what I've been experiencing is to add an 's' back into the url after it stalls and reload the page. It then stays 'https' for the rest of the session and loads fine. I just bookmarked my inbox with the secure address and I can go straight there. It seems like IE rolls over that transition without a hitch. There are other, minor bugs while using Firefox, but Gmail is still a great alternative and getting better. I have been using it more and more, even though Hotmail gave me 250Mb a couple of months ago. Anywho...hope that helps.

wow I got my 250mb's in July

[zzottt]

I also probably have one of the first hotmail accounts

anyone remember that Red login page they use to have?
hehe back when email was new... too bad we didnt get more space sooner, it would be cool to look back on all those first emails

gmail invite system

[jroysdon]

I'm wondering how long gmail will keep using the invite system (just through beta?). I keep getting more invites that I can send out, but I'm outta folks that want them.

Order is geographical

[kiwi_mcd]

Microsoft says that they are largely doing it by geographic region. My fiance with a UK one has had hers upgraded about two months ago. New Zealand is well down the order apparently. Unfortunately I did the obvious and it didn't work - changed my country in the settings to UK.

hotmail-gmail forwarding

[Anonymous Coward]

Just get gotmail to download your hotmail mail and forward it to your gmail address... I've been doing that since I got my gmail address.
I also uploaded all the mail I had received from the very beginning... The bad thing is, the emails' date in the gmail list will be the date you sent the mail to gmail, not the mail's date (however when you open the mail you'll see the right date).
However you can set up cron to run gotmail every 5 minutes or so, so that the date difference isn't that much.

Just my 0.05cents..

Yeahhh 250MB more for spam to fill up

[Celt]

I have a hotmail account which I never ever have given to anybody and it still gets spammed to the last!

I'd never use the service for proper use, besides the interface sucks..

Mine is still 2 MB

[rahard]

Hmm... What's this all about upgrade? My hotmail account is still a measly 2 MB. It's a very very old account (before it was bought by Microsoft) that I rarely used. Is there a difference between older and newer accounts? I guess, I don't think mine is going to be upgraded. Oh well. I'll stick with Yahoo and Gmail.

Re:Mine is still 2 MB

[Bloodshedder]

So is mine, still no upgrade, and I'm a bit disappointed. I too had one before Microsoft bought them out. I think I registered mine around New Year's of 1999.

heh, my Mom's account hasn't been upgraded either, it was probably made some time in 2002.

Re:Well it is not all about space

[aussie_a]

Now is there an alternative for Gmail? Because it too suffers from that problem.

MOD PARENT UP (nt)

[aussie_a]

I'm just fooling with ya :P

Re:Well it is not all about space

[aussie_a]

switch to Outlook Express for accessing your hotmail account. Fast working, no advertisements, and keyboard shortcuts.

Not security conscious, only works on 1 computer... Sorry. I -was- trying to think of benefits to using OE. I'm just not very good at it.

Pet Peeves

[Propaganda13]

I have 2 Hotmail accounts, and the link system will be the only pet peeve I have left.

Pet Peeves
Space - 2MB limit was only a pain for getting pictures.
Attachment size - same thing with pictures.
Links opening in a stupid window frame.

I have my regular Hotmail account that has NO SPAM ever. I use this for friends, family, credit cards, bills, and certain online companies. It has not been upgraded yet.

My spam account gets used for any website I don't trust. It dumps almost all spam into junk email, though I have had false positives. This account was upgraded 2 months ago.

Very old hotmail account, with no change

[Mike the Mac Geek]

I've had mine since '96. No change. Not really expecting one. Microsoft has changed TOS so many times that I don't believe anything they ever say or send out in regards to Hotmail.

Even if they offered 500 GB...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd still never go back. I signed up in 1997, before M$ had anything to do with it. Sure, hotmail was good back then, but ever since M$ took away every good feature one by one, I abandoned them long ago. Features like free POP3, auto-forwarding, and no spam were nice in 1997. They even didn't require cookies. Now all that has changed years ago. When I logged in one day to see my Sent folder mysteriously wiped out, that was the last straw. Good riddance hotmail! You've been useless ever since M$ bought you!

Re:Well it is not all about space

[anthony_dipierro]

Not sure what you mean about only working on 1 computer. Or "not security conscious" for that matter. I think the benefits are obvious. You can actually get a copy of your email on your computer without using copy/paste. You can change your from address. Filters are much more powerful and actually work. Now that they give 250 megs of space, I see no reason *not* to use hotmail and OE. Other than the fact that it's a Microsoft product, I guess.

And if you really hate OE, there's always hotmail popper, which lets you use any POP email client.

very little

[Anonymous Coward]

it even continues being very little.. gmail gives 1gb and without spam..

Hah!

[IntergalacticWalrus]

August 1999 is old to you?? My Hotmail account dates from before Microsoft bought it. Something like 1996. How's that for old!

Hotmail svcks...

[gamer4Life]

- account deactivation after only 30 days (e-mail gets deleted, so do contacts!) - what if you go on vacation?! - pop-up ads - big ads on the top and to the side - more clicks to access e-mail...it doesn't show your new mail when you login (which is what you want to see 99.9% of the time) - Spam control sucks. On the strictest mode, it blocks e-mail from your friends (Yahoo!, G-mail)..on less strict, it allows too much spam. - No secure login. G-mail and Yahoo! use https. - Lack of features overall. (far fewer compared to Yahoo or G-mail) - Microsoft spam...can't block it! I use Yahoo! because of all the integrated features - address book, stocks, calendar, notepad, photos, etc., etc... too many to mention. Not only that, but their spam protection is outstanding, unless you decide to open some e-mail containing an image beacon. But after a couple weeks, the spam received becomes minimal. My only wish is that they incorporate more Gmail features...like opening your inbox when you login (!), or showing the e-mail address without opening the e-mail...

Re:Hotmail svcks...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not only that, but their spam protection is outstanding, unless you decide to open some e-mail containing an image beacon."

Both Hotmail and Yahoo have options to disable images, but Hotmail only does so for "unknown senders", which is to say "anyone on your contact list and outside hotmail.com". So spammers just have to forge their From line in order to bypass Hotmail's image protection. (Unless they've changed that since the exploit was discovered, of course.) I'm not sure the details of the Yahoo one, because their spam protection works....

Search.yahoo.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn the URL idiots.

I've had 250 megs for about 2 months now

[ChrisXS]

I've had 250 megs for about 2 months now. I've been using my hotmail account since 1997 before they were bought out by Microsoft.

There are two reasons for which I have not switched permanently to Gmail yet.

#1: All the good names are already taken.
#2: MSN offers free access to hotmail via their Outlook email client. It behaves somewhat like an IMAP account and I don't have to deal with ads. I can also drag and drop hotmail emails back and forth between local folders in my email client.

Off topic: I would never pay for premium features offered by hotmail, gmail, or yahoo because for the same amount of money I could rent a mail server and use an original domain name.

No upgrade from hotmail

[vragho]

My hotmail account is since 1997-98, Size still is 2 MB, So i do not think they are upgrading the space, atleast based on the age of the account.

Regards,
Raj

nice gesture but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice to have all that space so now I don't have to worry for awhile about them cancelling my account or thrashing all my email because I didn't delete some of it to save space.

However, until they get rid of the, "we'll delete your account after seven days of inactivity" it is far from perfect. The fact is, I have some emails in there I don't want to lose, and that I might need at some later date. So, although its nice that there's more space, there's the constant threat of deletion that makes storing any useful information or emails there useless.

Gmail has them beat hands-down. Faster/minimalist interface, more space, no banners, better search system, ability to archive messages, and threaded emails.

Re:Well it is not all about space

[hyperlinx]

I'm quite happy with my gmail, but for those wanting something different in the "large" email category, try spymac....yes u gotta put a www and a .com on it....i believe they're up to 3gb of storage with IMAP, POP3, and SMTP access...

Re:Well it is not all about space

[hyperlinx]

Please mod me down for not checkin the facts...the "free" spymac accounts are 'only' 1GB...the 3gb are for pay accounts...the free accounts are available on this page.
http://www.spymac.com/world.php
sorry for whatever.

Re:Checking your HotMail Inbox without logging in

[kyhwana]

There's also a gmail notifier for firefox, which sits in the status bar

Re:Checking your HotMail Inbox without logging in

[lachlan76]

If you log in with MSN messenger, you get notified when there's a new message. Just got one then in fact.

Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Hotmail started it at least 6 weeks ago.

One of my hotmail accounts (mj*****@hotmail.com) was updated to 250MB way back.

Another account I have (r******@hotmail.com) is still at 2MB.

Why GMail speeds like amphetamine

[PSdiE]

There are simple technical reasons why readers will have noticed a discrepancy in the speed of Hotmail vs Gmail. Hotmail is built around a traditional client-server page model, i.e., the page reloads each time you do anything, along with all the unchanging 'boilerplate' page elements such as menu, ads, footer, etc.

Gmail, on the other hand, employs some beautiful client-side page loading techniques that mean that reading a message/switching to a different folder, etc., generally doesn't require a page refresh. The page simply queries the server for only the information that has changed (via XMLHTTP) and updates the page via DHTML. The result is a much snappier browser experience; the downside is increased min browser requirements (no chance of working in NS4, etc.).

XMLHTTP has been around since early 2002; it is primarily due to web developer laziness that has held-back more wide-spread use of this technique to improve the responsiveness of today's web applications.

PSdiE

Feck! Microsoft pulls free Outlook HTTPMail access

[PSdiE]

Feck! Not any more ..

From Paul Thurrot's excellent WinINFO Daily (27/9/04):

Microsoft Nixes Outlook, Outlook Express Access to Free Hotmail Accounts

Citing concerns about spammers abusing the service, Microsoft will announce today that the company is dropping a feature from its Hotmail service that lets nonpaying customers access their Hotmail email from Microsoft Office Outlook and Outlook Express. The feature is based on a technology called Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), an extension of the HTTP protocol on which the Web is based.

"Since we implemented Human Interactive Proof (HIP) to ensure that only humans and not automated systems were opening Hotmail accounts, spammers have found other ways to go after the system," MSN Lead Product Manager Brooke Richardson told me in a prebriefing Friday. "Recently, there's been an increase in exploits of the WebDAV protocol, which is used to enable people to access Hotmail from Outlook and Outlook Express. We've offered [this access] for free for some time, although it's typically a feature that other email providers charge for. But because of the rise in abuse of this protocol, we're making a change to WebDAV to curb abuse. Over the next few months, we're transitioning WebDAV to be available only to customers of our subscription services, such as Hotmail Extra Storage and MSN Premium. We expect this change will help us to more effectively stop spam emanating from Hotmail."

Richardson said that only a small percentage of free Hotmail account holders use the WebDAV feature. "About 5 to 10 percent of people have it set up," she said, "but most don't use it. And among that group, most activated it once, then never used it again. About 95 percent of our users don't use the feature." Richardson was also careful to note that this change doesn't mean that Microsoft is walking away from its nonpaying users. "We continue to invest heavily in Hotmail," she said. "We've recently instituted antivirus scanning and cleaning and brought back the [free] MSN Calendar. And we're actively moving free customers to the new storage allotments we announced earlier this summer." Richardson said that the company will upgrade storage allotments for all free Hotmail accounts by the end of the year. Microsoft has already upgraded paying customers, such as those who opted for Hotmail Extra Storage, she said.

Microsoft won't immediately shut off nonpaying users who have enabled Outlook or Outlook Express access to Hotmail. Instead, the company will phase out those customers over several months and give them plenty of warning that the change is coming. "Free Hotmail customers who want to use WebDAV have two choices," Richardson said. "They can opt for Hotmail Plus, which offers 2GB of storage space and 20MB attachments for just $19.95 a year. Or they can subscribe to MSN Premium." Microsoft will continue to enable WebDAV for customers of both products, she said.

Original Article

PSdiE

Re:Feck! Microsoft pulls free Outlook HTTPMail acc

[cyfer2000]

As what I've expected for several weeks.

Cash Grab

[Anonymous Coward]

If spam was so much a problem with WEB DAV, then why did they also block the ability to download received emails?

Yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just use Yahoo? It's better than hotmail hands down and more reliable than Spymac.

Compatibility or the lack thereof

[cameronk]

As a user of both Gmail and Hotmail I, like most people, strongly prefer Gmail. My largest problem with Hotmail is its incompatibility with some browsers. I use a variety of clients, but much of my internet access takes place over high latency, low speed wireless connections. (Usually GPRS) In these circumstances, I prefer to use a stripped down web browser like lynx or the PalmOS Web Pro application primarily due to their lower bandwidth overhead. To check my Hotmail and Gmail accounts, unfortunately, I need to open a full-featured browser like Mozilla. Strangely enough, Gmail is even less compatible than Hotmail. The net effect is that while mobile, I only check email through my main account that uses POP3 and that great open source program Squirrelmail.