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Microsoft Not Dropping Hotmail Name 202

Posted by CowboyNeal from the rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose dept.
EveryNickIsTaken writes "CNET News.com is reporting that despite planning for months to ditch the name 'Hotmail' for 'Windows Live Mail,' Microsoft will keep the Hotmail name, renaming the service 'Windows Live Hotmail.' Along with the slight name change, MS will be modifying the interface to look more like Outlook's GUI."
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Microsoft Not Dropping Hotmail Name More

Microsoft Not Dropping Hotmail Name

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  • Along with the slight name change, MS will be modifying the interface to look more like Outlook's GUI.

    It's kind of ironic that they've already been beaten to the punch on that front by Yahoo Mail (previously Oddpost).

  • Windows Live Hotmail (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    to couteract "Windows Dead Hotmail"?

  • Office GUI (Score:2, Funny)

    by Fyre2012 ( 762907 )
    MS will be modifying the interface to look more like Outlook's GUI

    Now with 30% More Ads! Sign up today!

    • Branding run amok (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Friday February 09, 2007 @02:25AM (#17945360)
      This was obviously brought to you by the same people who gave us seven versions of Vista with names that are made up of at least four words. Ballmer (a marketing guy) and his marketing demons wanted to tie into their new Windows Live brand, but they didn't want to lose the brand value of Hotmail, so they just grafted them together with no thought given to aesthetic or marketability. Windows Live Hotmail? It looks and sounds stupid.

      "Hey, guys, I'm using Windows Live Hotmail in Windows Internet Explorer on Windows Vista Home Premium Edition! REVEL IN THE BRANDING!"
      • I guess everybody should switch to Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Firefox on Fedora Core 6 Brand of GNU/Linux, or perhaps Edgy Eft Brand.

  • Live Mail beta (Score:5, Informative)

    by ThinkFr33ly ( 902481 ) on Thursday February 08, 2007 @09:30PM (#17943408)
    I've been using their Windows Live Mail Beta for several months, and while it's still not as good as Yahoo's mail beta, it's MUCH better than regular hotmail... which sucks.

    That said, I find myself using Windows Live Mail Desktop more and more. The early betas were pretty bad, but now it's a fairly good, simple e-mail client. Good stuff for those who don't need Outlook.

    I'm actually pretty surprised that the Yahoo mail beta doesn't get more press. It is, by FAR, the best web-based e-mail I've ever seen. Check out this review [weblogsinc.com] for screenshots.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by macshit ( 157376 )
      I'm actually pretty surprised that the Yahoo mail beta doesn't get more press. It is, by FAR, the best web-based e-mail I've ever seen.

      I've tried the new yahoo beta, and frankly it's just as sucky as yahoo's old interface, just in different ways -- it's a bit prettier, and the lack of full-page reloads is nice, but it's buggy, slow, cranky (interface full of "WTF" moments), and seems hacked up by developers with a bullet-list of features instead of a coherent vision of how email should work.

      Gmail is far, fa
    • It is, by FAR, the best web-based e-mail I've ever seen.

      I agree - I really like it too, although I wish they made scrolling through your list a bit better - it's kinda sucky, but other than that I'm crazy about that interface too... IMO it's the best one...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jpardey ( 569633 )
      I am going to guess that the new interface doesn't remove any of the spam, which is my main problem with hotmail. I didn't sign up, because the agreement had some sort of NDA or similar in it when I looked.

      It seems sort of odd to me that they would drop the uncool MSN name for the even more uncool Windows Live. I suppose they are losing brand identity, which might be a good thing.

    • Re:Live Mail beta (Score:5, Informative)

      by bendodge ( 998616 ) <`moc.sremmargorpgsb' `ta' `egdodneb'> on Thursday February 08, 2007 @10:58PM (#17944152) Homepage Journal
      I'd have to disagree. GMail is by far the best client, IMHO. It has very advanced AJAX, context-sensitive ads, good mouseover stuff, keyboard shortcuts, excellent mail and chat log search, conversation sorting (were it kinda cascades the original message and replies back and forth like playing cards, which you can click to expand), and all kinds of handy stuff.

      It has 0 image ads, and it has a tiny RSS bar at the top, which often has slashdot stuff. It also has the GTalk thing in a sidebar if you want it, and you can "pop-out" chats, drafts (which are autosaved every few seconds) and almost anything else.

      It just works marvelously, and is very simply and clean looking, compared to Yahoo! Mail.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by dosius ( 230542 )
        I hardly use my gmail, I just feed it into my regular local mailbox with fetchmail.

        Still, nice to have if I need it (as when I was stuck on dialup for a week).

        -uso.
      • I've got to agree on the part about GMail being much less cluttered. The Yahoo Mail Beta wants to behave like Outlook, Thunderbird, et al - that is, display a menu with "Inbox" "Trash" and whatnot, a pane/frame listing the emails in your box, and a pane with the contents of the message. Which would be fine by me, except that being in a web-browser (space occupied by the toolbars) and their excessive space dedicated to ads and Yahoo logo's leave no room for sorting through my mail list and reading the damned

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xtracto ( 837672 )
        I'd have to disagree. GMail is by far the best client, IMHO. It has very advanced AJAX, context-sensitive ads, good mouseover stuff, keyboard shortcuts, excellent mail and chat log search,

        Yeah, I use gmail too, it is quite nice. I only have one rant. Why the FUCK do they make the END key a shortcut to "thrash mail". I keep sending some mails to the thrash after I open them because I press the END key in order to go to the end of the message. Thats stupid.

        Other than that, I am happy with my gmail... well th

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by aj50 ( 789101 )
          I also had a problem with spam from a sourceforge mailing list but I'm not sure if that was just caused by a filter assigning a label to everything from that mailing list.

          In the end the project decided to filter all mail from an unregistered e-mail manually

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by naChoZ ( 61273 )

          Why the FUCK do they make the END key a shortcut to "thrash mail".

          The [End] key does not behave this way for me (Firefox/2.0.0.1 (Ubuntu-edgy)). Perhaps you've got some greasemonkey script behaving unexpectedly?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ElleyKitten ( 715519 )

        GMail is by far the best client, IMHO. It has very advanced AJAX, context-sensitive ads

        I think it's funny that people list the ads as a feature of GMail. Though, the ads are rather amusing in themselves. Whenever my friend Jesse emails me, I get an ad about Jesse Duplantis who will raise the dead. I also get ads about invisible men's underwear and taco holders. I guess that's better than the stupid flash ads like hit the fly for an ipod, but it seems wierd to claim that ads are a feature.

        • No, the fact that they are a single-line unobtrusive text ad is the feature. I mean, the ad is going to be there. gmail's is simply not annoying, and sometimes it is even amusing.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by naChoZ ( 61273 )

          Though, the ads are rather amusing in themselves.

          I thought it was pretty amusing when I clicked into my spam folder and the WebClips feature started show me SPAM related ads, recipes for SPAM dishes you can cook, things like that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by naChoZ ( 61273 )

        GMail is by far the best client, IMHO. It has very advanced AJAX, context-sensitive ads, good mouseover stuff, keyboard shortcuts, excellent mail and chat log search, conversation sorting (were it kinda cascades the original message and replies back and forth like playing cards, which you can click to expand), and all kinds of handy stuff.

        Absolutely agree. I started using my gmail account just for the mail searching alone. I'm on a ton of mailing lists and gmail is absolutely ideal for this purpose. Even for mailing lists in which you don't want to actively participate, having the messages handy for searching can be invaluable. Especially since most mailing lists have crappy archive searching mechanisms. I even wrote a bit of perl that could deliver an entire mailman archive to my gmail acct so that I could search it more easily.

    • I found the new Yahoo! beta far too painful to navigate, especially after I accidentally tagged one piece of mail as spam (which was way too easy to do) then couldn't find the thing through endless slow scrolling of the spam folder. Oh, and whole thing was rather slow (although it has improved).

      Oh, and the new Hotmail - I block all e-mail from Hotmail as reciprocation for their slash and burn spam prevention policy which drops all packets from ranges tagged "dynamic" - not even a polite bounce message.

      Cont
    • Is there any way in the new Yahoo mail beta to mark a message as spam without it displaying the message? Because that's a pain.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by cmacb ( 547347 )
      "I'm actually pretty surprised that the Yahoo mail beta doesn't get more press. It is, by FAR, the best web-based e-mail I've ever seen. Check out this review [weblogsinc.com] for screenshots."

      I prefer Gmail and I've tried them all, having signed up for both the Live beta and Yahoo's mail beta when became "available" umteen years ago, and at that time I was also new to Gmail and would have easily made the switch to something else. Both Yahoo and MSN take up too much screen real-estate with ads or other unn
    • I hate Yahoo Mail Beta. It's just as bad as Yahoo Mail regular, but slower! Why, why, why does it open up to a page that tells me I have X new messages? Who thinks that after waiting a solid minute for the page to load I want to wait another 30 seconds for the REAL mail page to load after I click on X new messages button. Ugh. Just an awful decision that sinks the whole thing for me.

      Maybe the rest of YMB is OK, but it's too slow and frustrating for me to use.
    • In other news... they'll be deleting all your emails daily rather than monthly if you havent logged in. They'll offer 4GB of space to beat google, and then delete emails as they come.

      # Cron job:
      rm -rf /var/spool/*

      # Since we all know they continue to use Solaris for their hotmail servers.

  • woo hoo 200 megabytes of mail space (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08, 2007 @09:31PM (#17943420)
    Gmail's available for everyone now, has more space and better spam protection. Why would anyone except for legacy users still be using Hotmail?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by killjoe ( 766577 )
      Because it's LIVE!.

      We should be glad they skipped the ActiveMailX and Mail.NET branding and went straight to LIVE!!!.
    • Actually, this legacy user stopped going to the page itself because I could see my Inbox from my MSN Messenger account and I never got anything but spam - and after 15 days they promptly deleted all my messages. 10 years of archived emails, LOST. FOREVER.

      Of course I didn't go back, because I was seriously getting about 4 times as much spam in my inbox as the "spam box" - and believe me, I did thousands of messages worth of "training" Hotmail. I just don't think they care about filtering spam. Now I use gmail, and I get about 1 spam a day sneaking in (usually with no actual advertising content), which is a 99% success rate, with only 2 false positives in the entire history of my email account.

      I don't see why anyone would use Hotmail over Gmail, period.

      • Actually, this legacy user stopped going to the page itself because I could see my Inbox from my MSN Messenger account and I never got anything but spam - and after 15 days they promptly deleted all my messages. 10 years of archived emails, LOST. FOREVER.

        They did the same with my buddylist in messenger. Luckily I had gaim logs to add most back. But I try to use aim for everything now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SamSim ( 630795 )

        I just don't think they care about filtering spam

        This is definitely true. Proof: much of the spam my Hotmail account receives was sent by Hotmail itself. Microsoft spams you. At least one email a month. You can't block it. You can't unsubscribe. Junking it doesn't seem to do anything.

      • And the best thing, in-message pictures from unknown senders can be hidden, which already helps you identifying those new picture-message spam messages.
    • Well, first, I pay for hotmail... so I have 2GB of space. So that's really not an issue.

      Second, I don't get spam. I think they actually use different spam filters for paided users vs non-paid users. That's really the only explanation. I have a couple free hotmail accounts that just get crushed by spam. But my hotmail account gets, at most, 2 spams a day. And it's actually been better recently. I don't think I've had spam in the past couple of days.

      Third, I like Hotmail's (beta) interface better. I love the

    • WebDav that's why (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Timbotronic ( 717458 )
      I'm on the beta for Windows Live Mail desktop and it's actually quite good. Decent search, rss, automatic syncing of contacts with the online version and none of the full Outlook bloat. As someone else said, you get 2GB of storage now so that's not a big deal.

      But the big feature for me with Hotmail has always been the ability to download mail to a local mail client via WebDav. I've been contracting for 5 years and most companies block POP3 and SMTP connections. GMail doesn't do WebDav and I don't care what
      • ummmm... is a local client superior to a web interface when you want to quickly check your mail on someone else's computer? local client requires you to spend around 5 minutes configuring it and then after you've checked your mail you have to delete the settings. With a web interface you just log in, read your messages and log out.

  • Hotmails Interface is teh suck (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Frogbert ( 589961 ) <frogbert&gmail,com> on Thursday February 08, 2007 @09:33PM (#17943426)
    I haven't used my Hotmail account in a long while, but the final straw of their ad-laden interface was the stupid "Today" tab. It was the first thing that showed up when you logged in. Why the hell would I be going to Hotmail unless it was to check my email? My Inbox is the first thing I should see, not the crappy "Today" tab that as far as I can tell is just there to get an extra ad impression.

    Now I have gmail and it is all business, I log in and see my emails. No extra clicking and I don't even notice the ads.

    • No extra clicking and I don't even notice the ads.
      Ssshhhhhhh. Don't tell them that. Pretty soon they'll redesign it so you do see the ads. Ads are the only reason it's free.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by njchick ( 611256 )
        Best ads are subliminal. If an ad annoys you enough that you start looking for ad blockers, it's a bad ad. If you don't remember seeing an ad, it's a good ad.
        • No. The best ads are ads that are noticed consciously, since they get you to click on them. However, you are correct that if an ad annoys you enough that you start looking for ad blockers, then it's a bad ad. You want something that's easy to see yet not intrusive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      Good point - I had one freind whose English is not very good complain she didn't know how to get her email for a couple of weeks due to this feature. All the dating agency and sexually suggestive ads that turned up on the hotmail login for her twelve year old daughter didn't impress either - paticularly a gay singles one.

      • All the dating agency and sexually suggestive ads that turned up on the hotmail login for her twelve year old daughter didn't impress either - paticularly a gay singles one.

        So your friend is homophobic? - the dating agency was bad, but egads, particularly the gay one! Quelle horreur!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )
          I think it was sexually suggestive stuff in general that was the problem - but the gay one did freak her daughter out a bit.

    • And, of course, Google is nicely mining your e-mails with the help of all the google searches you do and all the sites you visit with google ads (including slashdot).

  • Hotmail hotmail hotmail, how you trouble me! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Thursday February 08, 2007 @09:34PM (#17943440) Journal
    I might take this opportunity to plug a blog I'm currently working on, trying to get Microsoft to manage their passport.net / hotmail / xbox live syncing / linking a little better.
    (no, there's no ads on there)
    I wouldn't say it's well written, nor would I say it's a major issue but it is an annoyance.
    http://msnemailchange.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

    To quickly summarise, Microsoft has a policy where if you have a passport.net account to log in to some of their services, you can't change your login / backend email if you opted to chose a hotmail account, quite the frustrating if you simply don't want to use hotmail anymore.

    On top of that, those of us who own an Xbox 1 or Xbox 360 and use live can get frustrated that the live "gamertag" is permanently bound to a passport.net id which we may no longer want to use (be it avoiding people on MSN, sick of hotmail's email interface or simply want to use another email address)

    To my knowledge several other Microsoft web "products" use these live id's / passports but how well they integrate with passport.net / liveid I don't know - I believe there's a myspace kind of clone and also Zune owners need a passport - however, don't quote me on that.
    I wouldn't be surprised if there's more integration with Vista too, perhaps the messenger package installed as default, however that one is also speculation.

    So just to finalize my comment, yes I realize it's my own fault using MS's products and well yeah it's not a real major issue but it's annoying and could be handled a lot better, if anyone has any information on this, specifically names within MS / Xbox divisions for me to question, I'd appreciate it.

    and yes, I'm new to starting one of these ranty style pages so it's a mess, sorry all.

    - Scott

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dabraun ( 626287 )

      I wouldn't be surprised if there's more integration with Vista too, perhaps the messenger package installed as default, however that one is also speculation.


      Messenger was installed by default in XP. It is not installed at all in Vista (not by default or even an option, you need to download Windows Live Messenger if you want it.)
  • requiring a Windows Live ID for Office 2007 sucks

    it is a pain for me trying to install the new Office on all my customers' computers, since i now have to explain that in order to Activate it, they have to get a Live ID, which nearly requires a birth certificate and retinal scan....

    i mean, they already payed for a unique key, as was done in the "old days"...
    • Maybe I'm a bit behind the 8-ball here, but are you serious? They require you get a Windows Live ID in order to install their software? That's total crap! They suck!
    • requiring a Windows Live ID for Office 2007 sucks

      Are you saying that offline Office 2007 requries a live ID?

    • Re:related: Live ID/Hotmail for Office 2007 (Score:4, Informative)

      by Shados ( 741919 ) on Thursday February 08, 2007 @09:51PM (#17943594)
      Wait, what? Is it only present in the crappy versions or something? I installed and activated MS Office 2007 Ultimate a few days ago, and while I -do- have a windows live account, I never had to provide it. It was literally like Office 2003. They asked to activate, I clicked "OK" or something, and that was it.

  • What ever happened to software updates (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ace905 ( 163071 ) on Thursday February 08, 2007 @09:36PM (#17943454) Homepage
    " By adopting the name 'Windows Live Hotmail,' we believe we're bringing together the best of both worlds--new and old "

    What ever happened to just updating software. Is microsoft claiming that windows live hotmail whatever is going to be so 'new and improved' it's actually a different software product? Here's an idea, don't change the name - don't confuse people - just update the damned thing.

    As an end-user, there is absolutely no difference in functionality between Windows version 1 and Windows XP. XP windows didn't *do more*, it just *had more*. It still shows you neat little pictures, and you click on them, and software runs and then crashes and then so does your computer.

    Windows live hotmail extra 2-in-the-pink-1-in-the-stink beta alpha theta radiation flux capacitor is no different. It's a messenger client. If it's so different, why the hell do hotmail users want to use it?

    Microsoft's days really are numbered.

    ---
    two in the pink [douginadress.com]

  • What? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Donniedarkness ( 895066 ) <Donniedarkness&gmail,com> on Thursday February 08, 2007 @09:38PM (#17943472) Homepage
    What's the deal with all the "Windows Live" stuff? "Windows Live Hotmail"? Microsoft really needs to hire someone new to write these names...

    Now, if you'll all excuse me, someone just "squirted" me an email.

  • Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail (Score:5, Funny)

    by amplusquem ( 995096 ) on Thursday February 08, 2007 @09:45PM (#17943550)
    It just... flows... Kudos to the naming department.

  • Probably a good idea (Score:5, Funny)

    by edwardpickman ( 965122 ) on Thursday February 08, 2007 @09:46PM (#17943558)
    Changing the name to SpamMail probably would have been a bad idea.

  • meet the new .net, same as the old .net (Score:5, Funny)

    by hxnwix ( 652290 ) on Thursday February 08, 2007 @09:52PM (#17943600) Journal
    Once upon a time, Microsoft went slap happy with the Back-Office moniker. They hurridly affixed it to many a disparate product for reasons unknown.

    Days past, PR staff churned and version numbers changed in format, length and value.

    Eventually, Microsoft realized that back-office sounds like back-orifice. So, they went slap super happy with the .net moniker. They hurridly affixed it over stale back-office stickers and even on products that had been lucky enough to avoid the officially orificially excrementitious sounding branding the last time around.

    Days past, PR staff churned and version numbers changed in format, length and value.

    The most brilliant of the Microsoft Marketeers realized that .net doesn't mean anything. Bill himself saw this to be true and hurridly, desperately affixed 'live' to many a disparate product. The rest he called 'vista'.

    Days past, PR staff churned and version numbers changed in format, length and value...

  • For Immediate Release (Score:5, Funny)

    by StikyPad ( 445176 ) on Thursday February 08, 2007 @10:00PM (#17943684) Homepage
    I would like to take this opportunity to announce that I will not be changing my name either, but I may be changing my appearance to resemble people with popular names.

  • Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mfh ( 56 )
    Despite all of their attempts, Microsoft can not make better products, only better brands. Hotmail has powerful brand awareness that would be foolish to disregard. However, the problem now lies, is that in an attempt to revitalize the service's brand, they have attached their own equivalent of the word NEW to the service: Windows Live Hotmail. Usually a company does that when they have lost market share, which Hotmail must have now that Google's Gmail is open. Microsoft is in a pretty dull period right now,

    • Despite all of their attempts, Microsoft can not make better products, only better brands.

      What's wrong with Visual Studio 2005?

      Most large companies have a stable of products with some winners and some losers. Microsoft has slipped to the point where they have more losers than winners but that doesn't mean they "can not make better products".

  • fap-fap-fap-fap.
  • Is it just me, or does "Windows Live Hotmail" remind you of those ads pased all over topless bars?
  • Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

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