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."

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.

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: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: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.

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: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 [google.com]

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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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/ [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?

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: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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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?