hotmail.com (hotmail.com)

Member Name: stephbond89

Product:	hotmail.com
Date:	15/10/09 (66 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A great free email service which is simple and safe to use!

Disadvantages: Junk email!!!

Hotmail.com

About:
Hotmail.com is a free email server website, which really is free to use, no spam, no pop-ups and no spyware is added to your computer when you sign up, as the server (now) runs from Windows Live and Windows Live Messenger, making it safe to use on all computers, and compatible with all other email servers.

Hotmail is the most popular free email server in the UK (and as far as I am aware in America too), and along with the BTinternet, NTL's and Yahoo's email addresses hotmail tends to be the one you see the most.

The email server can be as anonymous or as open as you like (though anybody thinking of using it for scamming or bullying or anything stupid like that, be warned, your I.P. address is stored at all times, so you are never 100% anonymous, and all reports to police or hotmail itself will be investigated), meaning that your privacy can be protected.

Hotmail was launched in 1996, as "HoTMaiL" (the capitals and name referring to HTML, the encoding language on the internet). In 1997, HoTMaiL was bought by Microsoft, and changed its name to MSN Hotmail, it stayed as this until 2005 when it was then changed to Windows Live Hotmail, which was released to the World in 2007.

Available in 36 languages, and with over 270 million users, it really is one of the biggest email sites there is!

Registration
There seems to be no age limit to Hotmail, which simply asks you to type your Year of birth during the registration phase, and does not stop minors from using the service, which although in a way is good (meaning that children can have private email accounts where they can send work to for school, and email friends in the privacy of an inbox rather than on the net for all to see in a chat room or social networking site, but also means they're open for online bullying and abuse, as well as scams which could endanger their parents if they get an email asking for mummy and daddy's address, names, and if they can go and get mummy's credit card from her purse and give them the numbers...but that is always going to be an issue with kids using the net).

Registration is simple, when you go to hotmail.com, you see a simple white screen where on the right hand side you can sign in, and on the left hand side, you can click "sign up", and a very simple form pops up for you to fill in.

The form asks the basics of you: Name, Year of Birth, Town and Country which you live in along with Postcode. Then it asks you what you want your email address to be, you can of course chose whatever you want, but something simple like your name is less likely to be available, if it is unavailable you will be given a choice of other names which are like the one you gave to choose from, or you can choose another. You'll then be asked for an alternative email address or a Security Question, when you have completed this and typed the word which is generated randomly for you to copy (to prove your not a robot!), you are fully set up and are re-directed to your new inbox, which has a welcome email from Hotmail inside. Your email address is your log in name, and your password is the password you gave on the form.

Registration is very simple, just one page of forms, and no silly questions or activation codes. Once you have filled in that page, the email address is set up, and you're good to go!
Navigation
The site can be a little bit confusing when trying to navigate it. When you first sign in, you will be taken automatically to your inbox, where you will be told if you have any new emails, and you can review any emails which are in your inbox, delete them, refer them to your junk folder, report them as scam mail, or move them to another folder.

All down the left hand side of the screen are your folders Inbox, Junk, Drafts, Sent, Deleted, and then all of the folders you have added yourself (you could make a folder for School, Work, Friends, Family etc). Then below all of this you can "manage folders", this is how you add a folder and delete the folder too!

Above whichever folder you're in, is a bar, with New, Delete, Junk, Mark As, Move to, and a print icon. This is how you navigate the emails in your folders, you can tick the boxes next to the emails, and send them to junk, delete them or move them to another folder, as well as marking read emails as unread, or as a "phishing scam", which is when someone is sending you an email trying to get personal details from you, be it address details or log in details, or even bank details (though these should also be reported to your bank!).

This part of the navigation is easy, it's the rest of it which is a little confusing, which I don't tend to use!

Although Hotmail is a simple email account, there is also a profile part to the page, where you can add friends and update profiles and status', it's as though Hotmail is trying to be a social networking site, but I don't bother with it!

At the top of the page, you can go to your "home", where you will see how to edit your profile and add new friends etc, this is all very straightforward and needs no explanation. It's just the way it all works which can get a little confusing, and this is part of the site which I don't like, it should just be left as a normal email inbox, rather than trying to be something it's not. If we want to network, we;ll use Facebook!

Other than that, navigation is easy if you're just wanting to use the email tool, a little more confusing if you're wanting to use your "space".

Sending & Receiving Emails
Sending and receiving emails on Hotmail couldn't be easier. You can check your emails at any computer around the world unlike some email companies where you have to be on your own computer, or download software to view the emails. So you can check emails at any time of the day in any way you want, at school, college, in the office, at an internet cafe, on your mobile, on your iPod, on your palm pilot, on your laptop, on your computer wherever and whenever you please.

Receiving emails is very easy, as soon as it is sent by the sender, it appears almost instantly in your inbox (it may take a few minutes if it's a busy period), and you simply click on the email, and you can read it!!!!

Sending Emails cannot be easier than on Hotmail. You very simply click on New or Reply, and type in the email address you are sending your email to, and in the big box below type your email, which you can modify in font etc, and add emotions to (little smiley faces!) and colour.

Then you simply click send and the email is sent to the recipient within a couple of seconds (minutes in busier times). You can also attach documents and photographs simply, by clicking the attach button above the email, and going to the document in the Upload folder which you want to send, depending on the size of your document and the speed of your internet, it can take anywhere from 1 second up to a few hours to attach a file to your email. But on an average speed Sky Broadband which I am on (the lowest which Sky do), a large Word document takes just 3-5 seconds to upload to the email, whilst 10 photos take around 30 - 40 seconds depending on the time of day and how many people are using the site!

Whilst my mum was using a "dongle" internet connection last year and it was taking around half an hour for a Word document to be added to the email, but this is the slowest of slow internet connections!

Sometimes when an email address is no longer in use, or if something else has got in the way of your email been delivered, you will get an email back saying that the email failed to send, so you always know that emails have been sent which is great really!

The only downside to the inbox is that when you tell the email server that an email is junk, it won't always remember that it's junk, and will keep putting it into your inbox which gets annoying sometimes when your inbox get's filled with rubbish!!!!

Ease of use
The website is very easy to use, and even the most computer illiterate will be able to work their way around the site and will be able to send and receive emails!

Privacy & Security
Your account is password protected, which means that as long as you change your email every 72 days (you can get a prompt from Hotmail to change your password every 72 days!), then you should be perfectly safe from hackers who are hacking your personal details. But there is another type of people you have to look out for...the family and friends.

They may look perfectly innocent, but sometimes curiosity gets the better of them, they want to know what you said about them on that day, they want to know who that secret date was you had last week...or they may even be more sinister in their hacking of your account (trust me I have had it done to me myself!). So you have to make sure your Secret question is one that nobody will be able to guess, not even those closest to you.

If you have an alternative email address (a work email address maybe), you are better putting this as your security feature, as when you lose your password a reminder or link will be sent to your alternative email to change the password. If you don't have another email address which many people don't. You will be asked by Hotmail to give your postcode, and answer your security question which is chosen by you from a choice of around 5 questions (Where was your mother born, what was your first pet's name, etc). Once you have correctly answered these questions, and proved you're not a robot (by copying the word again!), you'll be prompted to change your password.

Hotmail don't share your personal info with anybody, and nobody but you has access to your account, unless of course a police warrant is acquired!

The account is reasonably safe, and I have never really had any bad problems with it, I have changed my email address once with the service (well got a new account when I changed my name), and have had no problem with either account.

All in all, the Hotmail account is the perfect free email account!!!!!!

Summary: A free email service which can be used by all!