Hotmail On Your Desktop

thomas2you writes "Microsoft has just started its beta testing on a new program, made to have Microsoft's hotmail on your own desktop according to an article on CNET. It's going to be free software, you're going to be able to manage multiple accounts and they are attempting to include the ability to also just control all pop3 and smtp accounts you have, including Google's gmail as well as Windows Live Mail, the successor to Hotmail. From the article, 'The move is a shift for the Hotmail business, which in the past, has charged users who wanted to read their mail using desktop software, rather than a Web browser. Microsoft charged $20 and up for its paid service.'"

Better Solution

[eldavojohn]

The move is a shift for the Hotmail business, which in the past, has charged users who wanted to read their mail using desktop software, rather than a Web browser.

And for those of us who have an ounce of intelligence [mozilla.org], there's no change [mozdev.org].

You might not have known this but there's already a tool out there that lets you connect and check mail from AOL, Libero, Gmail, MailDotCom, Lycos, Yahoo and (the seemingly "impossible") Hotmail. It's called Thunderbird [mozilla.com] with the Webmail extension [mozdev.org]. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there's even a Webmail plugin for Firefox that would allow you to check it automatically through your browser.

So when I saw the headline of "Hotmail On Your Desktop" I thought to myself, "So what?" I pulled up Thunderbird and there it was, Hotmail on my desktop. Am I some sort of sorcerer? No, but if this is news then I must have madd haXX0rz skillz to be able to do this when it's not possible. Or perhaps it's just another lame Slashdot article brought to us by a Microsoft employee that encouraged samzenpus to post it with a nominal paypal transaction? I'm not implying anything, of course...

But I suppose now, you have a choice:

1. Check your Hotmail (and Gmail and Windows Life Mail) through a new proprietary (malware issues?) client that will most likely bombard you with advertisements or
2. Check your Hotmail (and many other mail systems) through good old Thunderbird with no advertisements and source code that you can alter yourself if you ever feel the need to.

Pretty tough choice...

Remember, Microsoft owns Hotmail and, according to the article:

It's part of the company's broader Windows Live effort and could eventually serve as a hub, not just for Windows Live Mail, but for other Microsoft Web-based services as well.

That's right, "other Web-based services as well" like the following possibilities:

• The "Genuine Advantage" checker Web-based service. There to report you for anything you've done to Windows that in any way violates the EULA you blindly clicked during the install.
• Microsofty Ads! The Web-based service that brings advertisements to your desktop so that you can get all the cool new Microsoft products cheaper!
• Member Updates. The client application that annoyingly pops up in the bottom right of your screen as a paper clip to alert you of cool new Microsoft products!
• The Blue Screen of Death inducer--a service that allows Microsoft to trigger your machine remotely to BSOD on you. Why try to recover from an error when you can just reboot?
• The Friendly Survey Service, a program that just tallies up what you got on your machine and phones home to Microsoft so Mr. Gates can have charts presented to him that realistically show the threat of OOo against Office.
• Et cetera...

Yeah, I pretty much can't wait to install something on my machine that's going to be a catalyst for other Microsoft programs.

Free software?

[overshoot]

Actually libre or just gratis?

.END rhetorical_question

Users?

[jesterpilot]

Fine. Your hotmail on your desktop. Will there be *any* users? Do you know anyone who uses hotmail as a serious personal email-account? I don't. The last one converted to Gmail 6 months ago, here at the office, when Groupwise got replaced bij Outlook. Everyone uses Gmail. If M$ wants this to be a succes, they'd better advertise it with 'Gmail on your desktop'. I don't think [e-mail] will want to read her hotmail from the desktop.

Re:I don't want it

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want you can upgrade to 25MB.

change your settings to a valid us location
close your account
reactivate it again

and presto, 25MB.

http://www.isaack.info/archives/2005/03/04/more-st orage-get-250mb-hotmail-redux/ [isaack.info]

From the same company...

[dyfet]

...that brought the world Outlook and Outlook express! Oh goody, they wish to bring the world a whole new e-mail client host for viruses, trojans, and worms!

Wouldn't it be better if they instead produced a e-mail client that did not assume email could contain things to be executed, and instead simply let people read their mail? Now that would be original for them.

Of course, there are plenty of free (and also free as in freedom) e-mail clients already, including thunderbird, which includes plugins to do all those e-mail services today, without compromising the security of the machine in the process.

It's a mater of trust

[ZoOnI]

When Hotmail first came out I loved it. A free good service. Then M$ bought them out. M$ restricted the disk space and tried to get people to pay for the service. M$ then disallowed mail clients from connecting to the service unless they payed for the service upgrade. Then spam started coming in waves to hotmail accounts. I wouldn't be surprised if M$ sold the mailing list to vendors for a few $, hoping that people would upgrade to the pay service due to the full inboxes. A double profit.

People instead moved to better services like GMail. GMail gave lots of space so M$ followed suit as it lost users. Now they are what? our pals and are going to let us connect again to their hotmail servers and use the new client software.

M$ is a 2 dollar whore. The chance I run one more M$ program than I have to is slim to none.