Outlook Express

[jonniebkk]

Received an official e-mail today from the folks at Microsoft/Windows that people using Outlook Express they will no longer be able access their Hotmail/Window's Live accounts. supporting Outlook Express as of June 30th. Customers using OE are recommended to switch to Microsoft's free Windows Live email services.

[Thanh-BKK]

Hello.

I have NOT received such e-mail in any of my three Hotmail acounts. This would be a HUGE problem because since last December i am unable to actually use their "Windows Live Mail Desktop" application due to ongoing problems with their servers, namely DeltaSync. M$ has acknowledged that problem but since over 4 months there still is no solution.

About once every couple of weeks access via the "Live Mail Desktop" works, next day, granted, no more.

And no, it's NOT a problem on my end - tested with multiple computers, multiple operating systems (XP Home SP 2, XP Pro SP 2, XP Pro SP 1 pirated/no updates, Vista ultimate) with different states of Virus protection (Norton, AVG, Avast, Nod32, none) and various ISP's (KSC dialup, TRUE ADSL, D-TAC EDGE, ISSP leased line) and different versions (betas + full) of Windows Live Mail Desktop. Also THREE different Hotmail accounts effected for me alone.

M$ better get THAT sorted before they cut everyone off OE.

Best regards....

Thanh

[jonniebkk]

I don't know all the technical details but they did talk about some access protocol they were changing to that Delta Synch thingy you mention.

I notice they specifically mention that my version of OE uses something called DAV protocol to communicate with M-soft's Windows Live servers. Support for DAV protocol is what is being discontinued. Maybe your OE already uses one of the newer supported protocols so you didn't get the message.

Here is the complete text of the message in my Windows Live mailbox:

Dear Microsoft Outlook Express customer,

Thank you for using Microsoft® Outlook® Express. Our information indicates that you use Outlook Express to access a Windows Live™ Hotmail® e-mail account via a protocol called DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol). DAV, like POP3 or IMAP, is the way that a mail client communicates with a web-based mail server.

As a valued customer, we want to provide advanced notice that as of June 30, 2008, Microsoft is disabling the DAV protocol and you will no longer be able to access your Hotmail Inbox via Outlook Express. As an alternative, we recommend that you download Windows Live Mail, a free desktop e-mail client that has the familiarity of Outlook Express and much more. This next generation of free e-mail software will allow you to easily manage multiple e-mail accounts—including Windows Live Hotmail, plus other e-mail accounts that support POP3/IMAP. Better yet, Windows Live Mail integrates well with other Windows Live services, and downloads in minutes. After you provide your user name and password, you will automatically be linked to your Hotmail account, providing continued access to your email and contacts.

We encourage you to download Windows Live Mail at http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview.

And, to make your transition smoother, we've provided answers to frequently asked questions below.

Again, thank you for your use of Outlook Express and we are confident that you'll be just as delighted with the new Windows Live Mail.

Your Windows Live Mail team

Frequently asked questions:

Why are we disabling DAV?

DAV is a legacy protocol that is not well suited for client access to large inboxes. Over time, as we've provided more e-mail storage to our users—and now offer 5GB inboxes for free—a more efficient access protocol is needed.

What are we replacing DAV with?

We have developed a new, much more efficient protocol called DeltaSynch that is far superior to DAV especially for large e-mail inboxes. It enables email clients to only download changes since the last time the client polled the email server for changes. This is much more efficient and high performing than having to download all the headers in every folder as is the case with DAV.

Is DeltaSynch compatible with Outlook Express?

The new protocol unfortunately is NOT supported by Outlook Express and support would require too many changes to the Outlook Express software.

Is there a different or new mail client I can try that uses DeltaSynch?

Microsoft is providing Windows Live Mail, a free e-mail client that has the familiarity of Outlook Express and much more. This free, next generation email client enables users to easily manage multiple e-mail accounts including Windows Live Hotmail and other e-mail accounts that support POP3/IMAP. Windows Live Mail also integrates well with other Windows Live services, is optimized to work with Windows Live Hotmail, and offers:

* Offline mail

* Windows Live Hotmail account aggregation for those users with multiple Hotmail accounts

* Account aggregation for POP and IMAP mail accounts

* Rich photo-sharing capabilities

* Advanced search via integration with Desktop Search

* Safety tools (Anti-Virus scanning, anti-phishing, anti-spam features across aggregated accounts for customers who do not have an Anti-Virus product)

* Integration with Windows Live services including Windows Live Spaces

* RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed aggregation

* Ability to send SMS (short message service) text to a mobile phone from Windows Live Mail

Where can I download the new Windows Live Mail client?

You can download the new client at http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview.

Microsoft respects your privacy. To learn more, please read our online Privacy Statement.

Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052

Edited April 22, 2008 by jonniebkk

[JetsetBkk]

I should've mentioned Outlook Express in the title of my thread: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=184743

I downloaded Windows Live Mail (WLM) and here are the problems that I have found:

1. There is no "Outlook Bar"

This is a bar on the left with shortcuts to your most popular storage folders. It shows you how many emails are unread and you can drag and drop emails from your inbox onto these shortcuts to move them there.

2. There are no vertical lines in the Folder View pane.

If you have a lot of folders, you can no longer easily see to which folder a subfolder belongs. Yes, the subfolders are indented, but not a lot.

3. Storage folders take much longer to expand or collapse than in Outlook Express.

4. The colour scheme is crap.

You can only get what I think is "XP" style colors, but most of the options windows and configuration windows are identical to the old Outlook Express style. Also, this gives the lie to their statement that it would be too expensive to make OE work with the new protocol - they have used huge amounts of OE code in WLM, they just decided to do the protocol first and add in the OE code later. They could've done it the other way round and let people continue to use OE.

5. When reducing the width of the Folder Pane, it suddenly jumps to the "Collapsed View"

And when it does this it resets the positions of all the folders in the list to their original positions, thus undoing all the work you have done to move them to where you want them.

6. After clicking on "Send/Receive All", you get the same window as in OE showing progress.

So why can't we have an OE style colour scheme for the main window?

7. After running "Send/Receive All", the CPU is at 90% or more for several minutes. This never happened with OE.

8. After importing all my "storage folders" from OE, my inbox and another folder appeared to contain the correct number of emails. When I checked again several minutes later, one folder that had 1523 emails had "lost" over 1300 of them. Where did they go?

The other folder - my inbox - had 95 emails originally after importing. The next time I checked - several minutes later - there were 57. Where did they go?

Thank god I still have my original Outlook Express folders and files.

After attempting to re-import my inbox from OE to WLM, which WLM is supposed to be able to do, WLM crashed.

I'm sticking with OE for now. I'm not starting WLM again until June. Maybe then the garbage they are currently foisting on us will have been upgraded to at least a half decent beta version.