Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Unveils Outlook.com, Hotmail's Successor
New submitter faraway writes "Microsoft has just unveiled Outlook.com, the planned successor to Hotmail.com. It includes a lot of what you'd expect from email today, including storage (images, data), a calendar, integration with other Microsoft tools, and of course a clean UI. According to ZDNet, 'Outlook.com is integrated with Windows and Office, and can pull in Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and LinkedIn contacts. The new mail client has the Metro look and feel. And it is providing users with more granular control over which ads they see and where they see them.'"
Great. I didn't have enough problem trying to explain the difference between Outlook and Outlook Express to people. Now I need to also include Outlook.com in the "Yes, they're from Microsoft and named the same, but no they're not the same" conversation.
To the person who will inevitably point out that OE is discontinued, it's still on enough workstations out there that I still receive "Why won't my OFT work in 'Outlook'" support calls.
One thing worth noting about this whole Outlook.com land grab: The accounts you are signing up for are not email accounts, they are "Microsoft accounts." They are keyed to Microsoft's whole package of cloudy services, so when you login to Outlook.com, you're also logging into SkyDrive, Messenger, and whatever else gets provisioned for you. If it worries you how Google seems to follow you all around the web once you're logged in, well, this is the start of Microsoft doing it.
Breakfast served all day!
Hello no IMAP/SMTP support goodbye
In the new UI, somebody decided that little tiny dark icons with no text description were cool.
Gear -> Settings -> Button Labels -> Text
The trillion tiny little fuck-ups by Microsoft are fully evident in this new service: I am not allowed to enter my mobile phone number because apparently "it is not suitable in my region". Right.
And I got immediately an alert that someone tried to use my account without authorization so I have to immediately change my password.
Some other localization issues and forcing me to use a language I don't want to use... oh well, thanks for reminding me of what piece of crap Microsoft products are (still).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
You are required to pick a password of 16 characters or less - why? I blogged about maximum password length restrictions before, and I would like to hear a compelling reason why this is needed. Otherwise, I can only assume they are storing them in plaintext.
I have an e-mail client that checks my personal e-mail on my work desktop.
I check my mail on my notebook, work desktop, iPad and iPhone. They all stay nicely in sync.
Leave it turned on and use dynamic DNS. Better yet, ssh into your mail provider's server.
Oh. THAT's your real problem - it all goes back to your ISP using broken e-mail. I admit, I haven't used ISP email in more than a decade. You can get an IMAP account for cheap from lots of places. For less than $10/month I've got a couple gigs of web space, IMAP e-mail, ssh access to the server and a domain name (and thus an e-mail address that won't change as long as I can afford it). Apple will give you one for free, although it's possible they're reading your e-mail. Google will give you one for free, but they're definitely reading your e-mail. Another option, and the ultimate for the paranoid, is to get dynamic DNS on your home computer and roll your own.
Although, by leaving messages on the server you can do reasonably well even with POP on a decent smartphone.
To be fair, you're really kinda doing it wrong. A single "Microsoft Account" (that literally be any email account like -- mine's my gmail address) gets you access to all of Microsoft's properties -- Xbox, Zune, all the Live properties like Messenger, Bing and Bing Rewards, Skydrive, Office Online, etc. Mail through hotmail.com or live.com or outlook.com is all the same (well, I don't think hotmail.com has upgraded yet, but the others are the same -- in fact for me, outlook.com just redirects to a mail.live.com domain). You have the option to get a different address, for example if you're allergic to @hotmail.com and want to have @live.com or @outlook.com instead, but you don't have to. If you decide you do want multiples, you can create aliases (my @outlook.com address is an alias on my @gmail.com Microsoft Account). If you don't want to do aliases, you can easily change your Microsoft Account name (email address) whenever you like (have foo@hotmail.com and want it to be bar@live.com? Change it on your current account, don't just create a new account). The only difference between this and Google is that Google doesn't really give you a choice of other names. And at least with Microsoft accounts you can link them if you want. You can't link multiple gmail accounts.
That's your own fault for creating a new account every time you do something (I bet you have yet another account for Xbox, eh?). You know that part where is says "Login to your account or create a new account"? Yeah, you can log into your account there. You don't have to create a new account.