Hotmail is terrible

[Ytts]

"Surely," you may say, "You knew that already."

When I first opened a hotmail account, I did it because I didn't want to be tied to my current ISP with a @shaw or @telus or some email like that which would effectively force me to always use that ISP if I wanted to keep my email address. And with anyone that has a lot of email to go through from a lot of different people knows, changing emails can be a huge hassle and very important emails may get lost in the move.

And at the time, the web based interfaces for various email providers were pretty bad. Hotmail had a decent one that was relatively easy to use, and unlike the email address my ISP was providing, I could access it from anywhere, at any time. So the deal was sealed: hotmail address it was.


Fast forward about a decade of complaintless use and Microsoft has been cramming increasingly obnoxious changes to the interface down my throat while breaking basic functionally. Browsers that used to work fine with the system simply quit working, annoying "switch now" messages demanded my attention every time I logged in. Even in IE6, my emails would start getting all the linebreaks removed at random for no particular reason, making them practically unreadable, just a long smudge of text.

Emails I sent would simply never arrive to destinations I know they should reach, and emails that had been sent to me mysteriously quit arriving. The last and final straw had microsoft boot me out of the system while I was writing an email, losing my progress, and forcing me to use the new layout despite my steadfast refusal to move away from the classic style.

The only things I care about in hotmail is reliability, stability, and ease of use. MSN hotmail gone from being all three to having none of it in the name of pursuing some effervescent scheme of remaining relevant to people who don't (and never will) use hotmail while alienating long term users like myself who would have gone on using hotmail happily for the next decade.

Am I merely off my rocker here, or are others feeling the same way?

[Bane]

I've used it for about... 7 years at least, and never had any problems with anything.

[Xachariah]

My only problem with my hotmail/live account thingy is that it uses IE, which pretty much dies every four hours or so and slows my computer down, lately. . _ .

[Crysta]

Gmail >>> Hotmail

I never used it beyond for my MSN messenger account.

[Soja]

I only have my Hotmail/MSN account for archiving old messages and for my messenger.

Gmail serves as my primary e-mail provider these days.

[Rook]

I also only use hotmail for MSN. Only a few people mail me there, for some reason.

....Yes, Web, that's you. And pretty much only you. : P

-G

[Tsukiki]

Once upon a time I used hotmail.  It had so many delivery problems that I quit and went to yahoo.  That's changed too.


Currently, I use my private / business email through my website, and then combine that with my joyously reliable gmail account for frivolous shit.



Moral of the story?  Buy a website, use its email, and back up with gmail.  Oh wait, that's just reiteration.

[SixStringSamurai]

Hotmail was my first account, and I think I still have one open. I remember them asking for me to pay for more space and this upgrade and that upgrade. I switched to gmail the moment I could get a beta password. Hotmail is probably loaded with messages from people I no longer talk to and spam. Jam packed and constantly deleting to make room for new material.

I almost want to log in again just to see what's there...

[KitDreamer]

I've pretty much stopped using hotmail. For some reason emails from paypal and ebay still go there though. I should change that.
Post haste. Hotmail is increasingly becoming a gigantic pile of shite.

[Eos]

I use spaminator for all those porn sites that make you sign u

hey wait a minute

[Ball-o-Cheese]

Pretty sure Web is anti-gmail for a variety of reasons revolving around privacy and security? I think.

I started with Hotmail in 1997 or something, my username was [something]2000 so I was pretty hip for like three years. I ditched it for some of the reasons you're not happy; I wanted something that sent emails, and they seemed insistent on piling other things on and around the site until it was a huge headache.

I currently use Gmail for most casual/unsecure correspondance, because the interface is really clean and simple and the tag system is very handy. Other than that I rely on my college alumni account, which has some 1996 web interface that is rugged and seems to work with everything.

[Lorelai]

Huh, I don't have any issues with hotmail like these. I just log in one day, see the interface has changed, shrug, and carry on.

[Ytts]

Pretty sure Web is anti-gmail for a variety of reasons revolving around privacy and security? I think.

Pretty much, yeah. If I'm doing any work with financial information or sensitive stuff, I certainly can't have those conversations over gmail, as they permanently keep your emails with no way to actually delete them. Imagine this conversation:

Client: You got a copy of the XXXXXXX-database correct?
Me: Yes it's being stored on my gmail! We won't have to worry about accidentally deleting it.
Client: Er, you're supposed to delete it after we're done here.
Me: Oh, woopsie. I can't delete it.
Client: So you mean you just gave a copy of our highly sensitive trade secrets and business practices to a third party who can do whatever they want with the data? And even if their employees who had access to it never abused it, you just opened us up to a massive new liability in case we ever get sued, we now have to watch not only our backs but also google's back?
Me: Yeah! Uhm, no, I didn't... I just use gmail, the great free service powered by love and the blogs! It's great!
Client: Goodbye. You broke our non-disclosure agreement, so don't expect to be paid.
Me: Bothersticks.

Naturally I don't use hotmail for any work like that, but even so there is a chance someone will send something important to my personal address even if they've been asked not to, so I have to be able to permanently remove something I have received. Thus gmail gets the boot for pragmatic reasons.

[Robert]

Really though, to have complete control of your email to that extent aren't you left pretty much with using your own mail server and giving a web front end like SquirellMail. While I certainly agree Gmail has its own privacy concerns, I'm not sure I'd trust most other webmail providers to behave much differently.

[SixStringSamurai]

I like gmail. It's easy, quick and since I lose track of that sort of thing, convenient.

I probably should think more about my security, but I doubt anyone wants my Warhammer or Photobucket account details.

[Rook]

Regarding your example, Web, I'd suggest getting Gmail in a mail client of your choice, then adding to said mail client a GPG addon.

Problem solved, for the most part.

[Ball-o-Cheese]

Pretty sure Web is anti-gmail for a variety of reasons revolving around privacy and security? I think.

Pretty much, yeah. If I'm doing any work with financial information or sensitive stuff, I certainly can't have those conversations over gmail, as they permanently keep your emails with no way to actually delete them. Imagine this conversation:

Client: You got a copy of the XXXXXXX-database correct?
Me: Yes it's being stored on my gmail! We won't have to worry about accidentally deleting it.
Client: Er, you're supposed to delete it after we're done here.
Me: Oh, woopsie. I can't delete it.
Client: So you mean you just gave a copy of our highly sensitive trade secrets and business practices to a third party who can do whatever they want with the data? And even if their employees who had access to it never abused it, you just opened us up to a massive new liability in case we ever get sued, we now have to watch not only our backs but also google's back?
Me: Yeah! Uhm, no, I didn't... I just use gmail, the great free service powered by love and the blogs! It's great!
Client: Goodbye. You broke our non-disclosure agreement, so don't expect to be paid.
Me: Bothersticks.

Naturally I don't use hotmail for any work like that, but even so there is a chance someone will send something important to my personal address even if they've been asked not to, so I have to be able to permanently remove something I have received. Thus gmail gets the boot for pragmatic reasons.

I have never done any work with anyone who is comfortable shooting stuff off to a free email service, hotmail, yahoo, or otherwise. The only time I can ever think of doing this is when it was a client who actually said 'I AM PAYING YOU MONEY FOR THIS EMAIL IT TO MY CRAPPY WEBSERVICE OR YOU FIRED'. If you actually want to run any sort of business at all, you should just be getting your own domain and your own email service through some kind of commercial host.

I mean I understand what you're saying, but GMail really is obligated to protect people who use their service in a retarded way.

[Eos]

Couldn't you get trapped though like someone from the other company shoots you a casual question on your personal email like "hey is the game done yet" and you later get in trouble because even revealing the fact that there's a game violates the non-disclosure agreement, despite no details being revealed?

[Ytts]

I mean I understand what you're saying, but GMail really is obligated to protect people who use their service in a retarded way.

If you're saying, "but [is] gMail really obligated to protect people who use their service in a retarded way,":

Schadenfreude aside, that's not the question I'm asking. It's more of a simple question that goes like this:

"I need your product [ex: music cd] to do this thing [ex: play on my mp3 player]. Does it do it? No? Okay have a nice day."

In my case I need control over what data remains associated with me in the context of email message bodies, and an email service that does not meet that requirement is not a product I'll use. I'm not attacking gMail for not having that feature and I'm sure it does work for a lot of people - just not me.




On the topic of business + gmail, a lot of (small, pretend, started-in-my-mother's-garage-type) businesses up here are actually using gmail as the backend for their email by having it manage the email for their given domain. Pretty easy to set up, I'm sure.

[Scarley-Doll]

I have a hotmail account, but i don't like it, i find it difficult to use for some reason. It's the new layout as i usually just upgrade it because i can. Yahoo is my main e-mail and i've only have very minor problems with it, and that was before the newest uprade however long ago it was, and i opted to keep the old layout on that so it's all good. That being said, I don't use my e-mail much anyway, so i spose my opinion is kinda moot.

[Bane]

Now yahoo I can give shit about.

Spam Filter "on" and I still get messages in my inbox about how much of a baseball bat some blonde can take.

[SixStringSamurai]

In all fairness, you do sign up for those newsletters, Bane.

[Bane]

The important thing here is that yahoo doesn't block them!