Spammail (hotmail.com)

Member Name: MichaelR

Product:	hotmail.com
Date:	26/07/01 (113 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Outlook support, Signing up gets you an MSN Passport, MSN Messnger integration

Disadvantages: Loads and loads of SPAM!!!, Low quotas per account, Poor privacy policy

Well, I must say that I am genuinely amazed that Hotmail has received an 82% approval rating from Dooyoo members so far...

This is without doubt one of the WORST free e-mail services available on the web today, the main reason being the generous portions of Spam served up on Hotmail accounts - which render them completely unusable.

Out of an average of 30 e-mails a day on the Hotmail accounts that I had, only 1-2 would turn out to be 'proper' e-mails. The rest were advertisements for porn, bank loans, and all manner of other cr*p that I had absolutely no interest in.

And then there's the Microsoft Spam too... as MSN doesn't seem to believe in an opt-out policy.

The only way to avoid being bombarded with unwanted messages from mass-mailing programs is to choose a very obscure e-mail address which you will probably immediately forget. Any memorable name will get spammed, as the mailers seem to take names and append every available number from 0-999 to the end.

Which brings me to another bad point. You can never get the name you want to use on Hotmail accounts. You can spend hours typing in strings of numbers and letters and trying to get Hotmail to accept it - chances are it won't though, as someone will already have beaten you to every conceivable combination. You'll end up with something 'suggested' by Hotmail, which will most likely be very different from the name that you wanted.

Once you finally get up and running you get a very slow HTTP e-mail account and a pathetically small amount of storage space. The site is also adorned with various links encouraging you to spend time on MSN and sign up to even more Spam.

The layout is actually not too bad once you get past the home page. All the usual folders are there and there is now a "Junk Mail" folder. Don't expect all the junk mail messages to end up in here though - most will probably still end up in your
inbox.

There are tabs across the top of the screen to move between your inbox, the home page, e-mail composition, and help etc. You can also create your own folders for more effective management of your messages (although chances are you won't get to use this much as you have very little space to store you e-mails in). You can also have an address book saved on Hotmail and you can save a copy of any messages you have sent.

All very nice, and these features along with the ability to access the account from any PC anywhere in the world seem to be the reasons why so many people love Hotmail.

But why? All this is pretty standard fare now. You can get the same features - and often many more on top - with more storage space and less spamming from almost any other web portal now. Yahoo Mail has all the same features but loads faster, offers more storage space, and has better Spam guards.

Another draw of Hotmail is the instant notification that you have new e-mail via the MSN Messenger Service. This serves as nothing more than an annoyance though... I don't want to know that another porn site has just sent me an e-mail, or that I have a personal invitation to apply for some over-priced credit card that's only available to American citizens - and I definitely don't want to know about it every two minutes!

Again, this is managed much better by Yahoo. You can get instant notification via Yahoo Messenger and it doesn't alert you to any unwanted messages that may have been diverted into your "Bulk Mail" folder.

It's not all bad though. Hotmail does have some redeeming features.

Firstly, signing up to Hotmail gets you an MSN "Passport". This is basically a one-size-fits-all identity for all MSN services... and really you can't use MSN services without one. Hotmail might be complete junk, but the MSN messenger service is very good. I shalln't go into the merits of th
at particular Instant Messenger here, because it has a category of its own, but you can't use it without having a Hotmail account basically.

Having an MSN Passport will also get you into MSN Communities, which is a very active "club" site and does contain some very good forums.

Secondly, you can use Hotmail from 'proper' e-mail programs. One of the greatest annoyances for me when it comes to web based accounts is that I can't use them with Outlook Express - I have to fire up IE, go to the host site, click through some stuff, enter some passwords, wait for things to load, wait for things to update...

Obviously this is slow. I like to load up Outlook Express and have my mail polled and downloaded in seconds (as happens on my POP3 account - but obviously I don't want to give this address to a lot of people and companies on the web.) The advantage that Hotmail has is that it will function like an IMAP account under Outlook Express. You can add it as a server in Outlook Express and then use all the normal features of Outlook Express to manage your Hotmail - Excellent!!!

The Outlook Express compatibility is the only thing that Hotmail has over the opposition at the moment. The quicker polling and the ability to manage the accounts offline is a great feature, but sadly the copious amounts of Spam make Hotmail completely unusable and it just gets annoying having to wait for all the Spam to download every time you load Outlook Express... Eventually you just get too frustrated by Hotmail slowing down the polling of your other accounts and end up having to remove it from Outlook Express again.

Hotmail was the first free e-mail service, and it did have the best features for a long time - but things have moved on now. Hotmail is offering nothing more than the other free e-mail providers apart from Outlook Express support - and I dare say that it's only a matter of time before others start offering th
at too.

By all means, sign up for Hotmail to get your MSN Passport - but as for a useable, free e-mail service... don't even think about it. Look elsewhere...

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