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Microsoft The Internet

Hotmail Begins to Upgrade Free Accounts 380

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."
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Hotmail Begins to Upgrade Free Accounts

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  • My Biggest Problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Klar ( 522420 ) * <curchin@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Saturday September 25, 2004 @10:53AM (#10348336) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • by dncsky1530 ( 711564 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:06AM (#10348414) Homepage
      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.
    • 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)
    • by paragon_au ( 730772 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:10AM (#10348441)
      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?
      • 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.
      • by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @01:20PM (#10349206) Journal
        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?
      • 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

    • by pbranes ( 565105 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:11AM (#10348448)
      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.

      • 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?
    • 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.
      • Could you forward them to your hotmail address easily enough to do a backup on them?
        • 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-
    • 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.
    • by AnwerB ( 255422 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:39AM (#10348603)
      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.
      • 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.
      • 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

      • 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.
      • 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 [isnoop.net]. 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

      • "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.
      • by mjuarez ( 12463 )
        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 r
    • 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 abou
    • 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.
    • 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 tex
    • by noai ( 816517 )
      How many users worked on Hotmail? And how many users worked on GMail?
  • by Saven Marek ( 739395 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @10:54AM (#10348346)
    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
    • 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?!
    • by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:02AM (#10348387) Homepage Journal
      Are you still using Lotus 1-2-3, too?
    • Re:Im glad for one (Score:2, Insightful)

      by shadowmas ( 697397 )
      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 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:40AM (#10348607)
      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.
      • 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.

  • indeed? (Score:5, Funny)

    by valkyriekl ( 788246 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @10:54AM (#10348351)
    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!!!
  • ...and its still 2mb. Any news on the attachment sizes? 1mb is pretty crappy.
  • Not chronological (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25, 2004 @10:56AM (#10348359)
    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.
    • Back in 2000 MS started migrating [theregister.co.uk] 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
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • Mine is from 1997. No upgrade.
    • 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
    • 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.
  • 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.
  • 1GB is still bigger than 250mb.

    Unless of course your living in a reality distortion field.

    ---

    • by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:13AM (#10348462) Journal
      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.
    • ...This is hotmail, not .Mac. Steve Jobs reality distortion field only works with Apple related products.
    • 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!
  • by NIK282000 ( 737852 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @10:59AM (#10348367) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • more spam (Score:2, Funny)

    by IAR80 ( 598046 )
    Swell! More spam can fit in.
  • ...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...
  • Frames (Score:5, Insightful)

    by signore pablo ( 544088 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:00AM (#10348380)
    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 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Yewbert ( 708667 )
      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

      • 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 (Score:2, Informative)

        by Savves ( 786087 )
        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.
  • 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)?
    • 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...
    • 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...
      • 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...? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Richard W.M. Jones ( 591125 ) <{rich} {at} {annexia.org}> on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:19AM (#10348493) Homepage
      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 [postmaster.co.uk][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!

    • 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.
    • 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.
  • by drgroove ( 631550 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:04AM (#10348405)
    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.
  • hotmail? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Coneasfast ( 690509 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:09AM (#10348433)
    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?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Now, if .Mac will get a grip and increase their limits as well!
  • by theolein ( 316044 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @12:38PM (#10348971) Journal
    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"
  • Mine got upgraded almost a month ago, newb.
  • by MIcroswipe ( 149156 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @12:40PM (#10348982)
    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?
  • by hey ( 83763 )
    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 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.
  • 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 [ihatemsn.tk]...
  • by skogs ( 628589 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:56PM (#10350231) Journal

    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

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