back to article Hotmail upgrade finally reaches 350m users

Microsoft has taken its sweet time to roll out its new version of Hotmail to its 350 million users, but everyone has now been upgraded. The software vendor said that most Hotmail fans got the latest version in the past week. In late May Microsoft plastered tube stations, buses and billboards with its bewildering “New Busy” …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    par for the course

    A tasteless and inaccurate approximation of 'cool' from Microsoft? What else did you expect?

  2. Uwe Dippel
    WTF?

    What else to expect!

    Though your plight is self-inflicted. There is always Yahoo, Gmail, and a bunch of others.

    But if you can't be helped, you can't.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    350 mil users?

    Is that all? I thought world + dog had either hotmail or yahoo acct.

    1. frank ly

      My Dog

      My dog is far too sensible for that; but I have a hotmail account.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        My cat

        has a gmail account. But not a hotmail account. Or, indeed, an El Reg one - which surprises me actually! I think I'll bring it up when I get home tonight.

  4. D@v3
    Thumb Down

    Oh my god, my eyes my eyes....

    Fortunately, i only use my hotmail account for signing up to dubious websites. If it was still my main account, I'd be looking to jump ship.

  5. Neil Charles
    Stop

    The only thing you need to know about hotmail

    Is that a while back, Microsoft quietly (or loudly? I don't know but it suddenly started working without paying for a premium account) let you access your emails with POP3.

    You can't auto forward from Hotmail. But you can set up a Google account and have it fetch your messages from Hotmail every few minutes. Job done, never looked back.

    If an evil global conglomerate are going to read my emails and advertise at me, I at least want a nice looking, useable front end in return. Google mail it is then.

    1. Lionel Baden

      huh ?!

      If an evil global conglomerate are going to read my emails and advertise at me, I at least want a nice looking, useable front end in return.

      But Ms dont read your mails

      They admited it was to much hassle !!!

      personally i think their (crap) spam filters would warp the results and everybodys seearches would end up looking for sex pills :D :D

      p.s. hotmail user !!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Grenade

      Gmail? No thanks, I like to keep my email private.

      Ah yes, good old Google and their wonderful gmail.

      Where Google scan and analyse every one of your emails.

      AND Google have thoughtfully and helpfully provided the US Government with a backdoor to allow THEM to scan and read any gmail emails they choose to read.

      No thanks, hell will freeze over LONG before I entrust anything of mine to that bunch of scum and villany.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You can use gmail

        to social engineer them?

  6. Adam 60

    Too stupid to own a computer

    "What's all this shit when I login to Hotmail...? How about you just go straight to my inbox?," noted gazsimmons on Twitter.

    This was my first thought as well, however instead of crying like a baby on Twitter I spent 10 seconds to sort it out.

    Right at the top of the new homepage is an options link, and the very first option is to select whether or not you go directly to the inbox - hardly rocket science!

    These days if something is perfectly configured out of the box, people would rather complain on the internet than trying to sort the problem out themselves.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    like the new hotmail

    Actually really like the new hotmail. Also it does something smart with documents so it takes up less space and I think between 2 hotmail users you are accessing a common location not just an attachement.

    You can also open/edit Office documents on the Web which is something never seen before. You don't need to have Office installed. Searching mail is also better. All in all a very good change.

    1. frank ly

      Think About It

      "..You can also open/edit Office documents on the Web which is something never seen before.."

      Could that be because these Office documents of which you speak, are in a proprietary format which is owned and controlled by........Microsoft; and they've only recently started doing it?

      " You don't need to have Office installed."

      You do if you want any 'advanced' (= reasonably expected) features - such as copy/paste between a web based document and an old (Office 2000) installed application. I know, I've tried it.

  8. copsewood
    Gates Horns

    customers will get what they pay for

    Frankly I'm surprised people are not more suspicious of the motives of postmen who deliver letters gratis. Hotmail's customers are not the users. Those purchasing the advertising data and paying Hotmail's bills are the customers. The users and their messages are the commodity being sold.

    Even if the raw data is sufficiently anonymised so that those who pay for this can't identify individuals yet, those selling this data have to make a profit or go out of business and those paying for data will want as much detail as possible from it about ever smaller targetted groups and even individuals. This strongly implies that anonymisation will have to be reduced to an extremely thin margin or competitors in the gratis email business which play faster and looser with user privacy will outcompete those which handle user data ethically.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Site don't accept HotMail anymore

    Most sites I go to will no longer accept HotMail as a valid email host, so it's no great surprise they only have 350M users. The world and his dog all know that pill-pushers and dubious cream-floggers use HotMail to push spam.

  10. Robinson

    Surprised.

    "What's all this shit when I login to Hotmail...? How about you just go straight to my inbox?,"

    I couldn't agree more. Also, I discovered my facebook updates were being published to my MSN, for all to see (!) at one point. I managed to disconnect the two after some major ***ing about. I didn't give permission for it to do this and to be honest I have absolutely no idea how the two got connected, apart from the fact I use the hotmail address as my facebook email address. Some bright spark decided one day to connect the two without asking me if I wanted them to. How ****ing rude.

    I'm on the verge of deleting my hotmail account.

  11. Ken 16 Silver badge
    Gates Horns

    A shame you can't port out of email accounts the way you can with phones

    I'd be nice to move my old hotmail account somewhere else but still keep the address for those rare friends who remember me from the 90's.

    1. copsewood
      Gates Horns

      Register your own domain

      If you identity ends with @hotmail.com then Hotmail own your identity by definition: it's their domain, not yours.

      If you register your own domain name you can move your email hosting between providers and it doesn't matter which ISP you use. To keep service providers as honest as possible you might also want to consider keeping your domain registration with a different company than your hosting.

  12. NogginTheNog
    Thumb Down

    It's free

    So how complaining can you do really??

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well, once they've nicked enough ideas from Google...

    ...maybe their email service will be usable again. It was okay (for its time) before MS got their hands on it. Then they messed the whole thing up with clutter. I tried GMail as soon as it turned up, and having seen how awesome it was in comparison (in look and feel, storage space, conversation views, searching ability, etc. - I could go on), I jumped ship, and I've not looked back. As far as I can see, they've been playing catch-up ever since.

    Yes, yes, I know Google aren't perfect, and if you want to bring out your tin-foil hat, saying they "read" all of my emails- I don't care. Email isn't secure anyway. Don't put anything in an email you wouldn't write on a postcard.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can you trust Hotmail?

    Some friends of mine ditched Windows some time ago but remained on Hotmail. Their account got broken into recently and Microsoft were no help at all. Presumably all their emails were accessed for any private information. They have sinced changed email accounts and swore they would never use Hotmail or any Microsoft products ever again, new version or not.

    Personally, Hotmail has become synonymous with shady dealings and I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole other than using it as a semi-permanent address for signing on to dodgy sites. I would miss it if it was no longer accessible if only for that reason.

    1. JAK 1

      suppose it depends

      on how they got your friends details

      Were they part of the leaked list last year? Or did the "hackers" cleverly guess the password was password

      The new hotmail isn't that bad at all, I prefer the new interface and still prefer it to Google's efforts.

      Although if Google did open up googlemail.co.uk I may tempted to swap if I could grab a decent address

  15. ratfox
    Thumb Down

    350 millions *accounts*

    But how many are used?

    As in, not just to register on web sites you don't want to give your real email to?

    Or just to be able to use Microsoft Messenger?

    I have two hotmail accounts that I use for these very purposes... And I never read the inbox.

    I never could forgive hotmail for regularly sending me spam emails about its "features". The messages precised they were "part of the service", and that I could not turn them off (!)

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @ frank ly

    I mean that I've never seen before in any service where you can open any document on the go. I don't have a google mail account but in yahoo if someone send you a .txt file you can't open it on the go. You need to save it use your favourite text editor and then attach it again. With hotmail a txt or xls file opens in the browser and it's amendable and saveable.

    Of course if you want to paste into a office 2000 document from the web you need office installed!! where are you going to paste it otherwise.

    My point is in hotmail you don't need any fat client to open common file formats which is the first time I've seen in any email service. Since you opened the conversation I also like the clean my contacts feature and saving your photos which again doesn't need any fat client, just copy past einto the browser to load your pictures. Loads pictures asynchronously as well. This is free so definitely better than yahoo or gmx my other 2 accounts.

  17. drinkturps
    Thumb Up

    Fixed!

    I'm happy with it. They've finally got rid of a glitch that occurred when using Firefox. When you attempted to reply or forward a message it never contained the contents of the original message. You had to clear the cache each time you had to reply! Glad it's fixed.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Treacle...

    And hotmail now runs even slower, guess thats what microsoft calls an upgrade then.... good job I only have to log in one a month or so as i use it as a spambox, if I needed it daily I think I might hang myself.....

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You have hotmail account?

    If you do, you are an idiot, no ifs, buts or maybes about it.

    I remember when in 1997 I had a netscape account, 5 times more storage and 3 times more allowance for sending emails. they have consistently always been behind the competition or on par with regards to capacity.

    When I see hotmail on a CV for an IT job, it ends in the bin.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      When I see...

      ...that the email address on the CV is blue and underlined, it also ends in the bin.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      idiots everywhere

      "When I see hotmail on a CV for an IT job, it ends in the bin."

      So you'd rather they distribute a "real" email address to IT recruiters across the land.... Hmmm.

      i agree that hotmail is crap and shouldn't be your primary email address but surely applying for jobs and distributing your contact details to people you have never met before would be a perfect use for a "disposable" email address.

      Back in 1997 Netscape was owned by AOL - possibly the worst ISP ever... I know prior to that purchase netscape had some good things going for it but come on now... who is the idiot??

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    In all honesty

    I think it sucks

  21. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    So, where are the really useful features?

    Like IMAP so I can get email on my Mac and iPhone without resorting to a web browser or that truly awful iPhone app Microsoft just launched? It just seems that every time they update hotmail that it's actually worse to use than it was before.

  22. Grant 5
    WTF?

    Errrr

    A: It's FREE

    B: I really like the new hotmail, it's one of the best free web products out there....did I mention it's free!!!

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Meh.

    I wasn't expecting the upgrade and now it's here, well, meh.

    Upgrades that alter a well-known user-interface are a bit like supermarkets moving their produce around the store to 'expose the customers to the full range of products'. I'm still going to buy what's on my shopping-list regardless of how many different kinds of bread you wave in front of my face, it's just that now everything's moved it'll take me a bit longer than before and piss me off. Which means eventually I might stop shopping there and go somewhere else. OTOH if it's an occasional thing I'll probably just get used to it.

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