Blowing hot or cold? (hotmail.com)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	hotmail.com
Date:	31/12/00 (84 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Roaming access, Free, Works with Outlook Express

Disadvantages: Jink mail can be a problem, Slow

There can't be too many internet users who haven't heard of Hotmail. Microsoft's free web-based email system has been around for years and has it's fair share of supporters and detractors.

I've had more than a few Hotmail accounts over the years since I went online which have been used for a variety of reasons. The main reason a Hotmail account was created at all was to protect my own personal email account from spam. By using a free web-based email account, I could eliminate this problem.

I could have chosen any web-based email for this purpose and Hotmail aren't the only people who offer such a system - you can get one from YAHOO or Lycos, for example. In fact, the reason I chose Hotmail over anything else was the fact that it was simply the most famous - the decision (which was made over four years ago!) was not based on anything such as site features, inbox size or any other criteria you might have expected.

Signing up with Hotmail is simplicity itself - you supply your name and a few other details (nothing overly personal), choose your account name, enter your password and away you go! Well, not quite, because you might have trouble getting a nice, simple name and if you're looking for something easy to remember like johnsmith@hotmail.com, then you may well be disappointed! It might be advisable to come up with something slightly out of the ordinary (along with a few alternatives) before you actually sign up as once your name is chosen, there's no changing it.

Wading past the optional subscriptions to various magazines and offers (you can subscribe to these if you wish and there seem to be hundreds to choose from, but don't worry you can go back and subscribe to these at a later date if you wish), eventually you are given the choice of account. Hotmail offer two types of account - free and paid. The free account (which will be discussed here) is more limited than the paid type. Obviously, M
icrosoft are pushing their paid services so this is the most prominent, but the smaller link at the bottom will let you sign up for free.

For your money (from £14.95 to £39.95 per year), you can increase the inbox size from the standard 2MB (which is what you get in the free version) right up to 100MB (which also includes a 20MB attachment limit). Subscribing to any of the pay services also means that you no longer have to log into your account regularly to keep it active as you would for the standard service and you get access to one or two other features.

Depending on how you plan to use your account, the standard 2MB may not be enough, although I have found it to be more than adequate for my uses and I have never been in a situation where I've had to delete stuff to make room for incoming email. A friend of mine uses his account as his main email account and regularly has to clear it out to make room for incoming email and I believe he mentioned that if your account goes over the 2MB limit then Hotmail starts automatically deleting email from your inbox, although I think you are given a few days to do your own tidying. If not, then Hotmail deletes email for you - I believe it deletes the older stuff first.

Using Hotmail is quite simple if you are already familiar with any kind of email system. There are all the usual features for sending email - organising your email (including the ability to add custom folders), adding and sorting your contacts etc. and these are easily accessible from the main screen. If you haven't used any kind of email system before, Hotmail is as easy to get to grips with as any thing else.

So far, over the course of at least 4 years, I've only ever encountered one time when I was unable to access my account and that was due to some kind of server problem which lasted a few days. No notice or warning was given about the problem, but after a few days, my account reappeared and completely intact
(i.e. no emails had gone missing and none of my settings or details had changed). While you might expect this level of reliability from such a major name as Microsoft, I think it's a good sign when I've had half a dozen or so accounts and practically no problems.

Mail is delivered and received quickly and from what I can see, very rarely gets lost in transit (although this has been true of any email account I've used - failure rates are practically zero!)

One downside of using Hotmail is that if you get an email with a link in it, the link opens up in a Hotmail window and at times this can mean that the link doesn't work properly (e.g. links to online surveys), but there is a way around this.

I have also found that the site can be quite slow at times. Some of this is to be expected with accessing your email account, but another part of it is due to the fact that Hotmail is quite graphical. Obviously if you are on a broadband connection, this probably won't matter but for dial-up (56kb modem) users, this might be a frustration.

One advantage that Hotmail has over other similar options is the ability to use your account through Outlook Express 5 (and later versions) which means that you can use Hotmail almost like a 'normal' ISP email account. This, handily, also cuts out the two downsides to Hotmail as I've mentioned above as you're only connecting to the email database (so you don't have to keep downloading the graphics) and links contained within emails open up in your default web browser without any connection to Hotmail. If I recall correctly, this wasn't the easiest thing to set up with Outlook Express 5, but with Outlook Express 6 it's practically automated and simplicity itself to get working. It's also worth nothing that your Hotmail email is kept on the Hotmail servers and like 'normal' email accounts, you don't actually download it to your PC permanently. r>
The one thing that everyone will probably mention when it comes to Hotmail is the spam. I'm not sure how everyone else operates their accounts, but I believe the amount of spam you receive actually depends on how you use your account. As I've already stated, I've had at least half a dozen Hotmail accounts over the years which I've used for various reasons and for varying lengths of time. The accounts which have been used for personal reasons and not given out to anyone have stayed spam free while the accounts which have been used to sign up to various sites and services and which have been on public display (e.g. here on Dooyoo or on message boards) have attracted large quantities of spam.

If you do start attracting spam, Hotmail does come with a handy filter which is easy to use and very effective. Addresses can be banned by name or complete server (e.g. if I get spam from jim@spamcentral.com, I can choose to block Jim solely or email from spamcentral.com totally). If Hotmail does accidentally send some proper mail to your junk mail folder, you can add addresses to a safe list to ensure that it's no longer classified as junk! I'm not sure how many 'block' addresses you can have - I assume it's quite a lot as I've yet to see any messages telling me I can't block further addresses (and I have blocked quite a few!) These are extremely handy features, although you can only use these if you sign into Hotmail via the web and not via Outlook Express.

Hotmail is also linked to many other different sites (e.g. eBay and expedia amongst others) with something that's known as the Passport which essentially means that you have one set of sign in details and you can use these to gain access. I haven't used this on other sites, so I can't explain exactly how it works - my passport is used to gain access to Hotmail and MSN Messenger only. Speaking of MSN Messenger, this can be linked to Hotmail so tha
t when you sign in, it can keep you informed of new email in your inbox.

Overall, I have no real complaints about Hotmail - as a free service, it does the job I ask of it and it keeps my private email account from being spammed. Using the service through Outlook Express is excellent and I can use more than one account at the same time without having to sign out and into several different accounts. There are other, similar web mail accounts out there and everyone has their favourites, but for me, the ability to use Outlook Express saves me loads of time and effort and for that reason alone is why I continue to use Hotmail.

If you are considering one of the paid options, perhaps to use as a private email account, I would suggest that you shop around for a hosted email account. For example, I got my own domain name for about a fiver for two years and a hosted email account for about £7 per year for a 50MB account plus I also get a web mail (i.e. check your email on the internet) access so I can check my mail wherever I am! So in theory, I can get two years of this email access for a little over Microsoft's price for a 10MB account.