Msn Hotmail

[waldwolf]

In an earlier thread, several publications were quoted as having written, Hotmail is planning to eliminate access to email accounts using OUTLOOK or OUTLOOK EXPRESS .

The following is the reply received, following a request for clarification:

Thank you for writing to MSN Hotmail Technical Support.

This is (name deleted) and I am writing in response to your inquiry about MSN's plan of eliminating free Hotmail accounts to access their messages in Outlook or Outlook Express.

I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. Unfortunately, we recently received an extremely high volume of e-mail messages and are working diligently to catch up.

I understand that you need to access your Hotmail through Outlook or Outlook Express. You can no longer set up a free MSN Hotmail account to download Hotmail to a Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express inbox. This change was made to help stop e-mail abuse. However,  if you have a free Hotmail account and you have already set up Hotmail to download to Outlook or Outlook Express, you can continue to use this feature.

Junk mail distributors (spammers) exploited MSN Hotmail accounts through Outlook and Outlook Express to send unwanted messages to MSN Hotmail customers and others in the e-mail community. By making this configuration feature part of our subscription services, we require customers to provide billing information. Therefore, the mailers are accountable, and we can help limit the amount of unsolicited e-mail that MSN members and others receive.

If you currently have a free-Hotmail account and you want to configure Hotmail to download to Outlook or Outlook Express, you can upgrade to MSN Hotmail Plus or MSN Premium. Both of these paid subscription services support this feature.

For more information about the benefits of upgrading from a free MSN Hotmail account to an MSN Hotmail Plus or MSN Premium subscription, visit http://join.msn.com

Thank you for your understanding and continued patronage of MSN Hotmail.

Please don't hesitate to write back if you encounter problems with Hotmail and its services; we'll be glad to assist you.

Have a nice day.

Sincerely,

(name deleted)

MSN Hotmail Technical Support

NOTE: The red highlighted portion and name deletion in above message is my work, not the senders.

Comment: My reading of this response/policy is, if you already have a free Hotmail account, then you will be allowed continued access using Outlook and/or Outlook Express, but new "free" accounts will not be aforded this privilege.

Your thoughts?

[Axel]

Interesting, sounds like a soft approach to a paid-mode in the near future.

[Highwayman]

My thoughts? When l first saw this reported it did indeed say that current Hotmail accounts already linked to Outlook/OE would continue to be free.... for now. General opinion then was that this would not continue for very long. Perhaps with Gmail making their e-mail compatible with Outlook/OE, Microsoft have had a change of heart.

Other than wanting to maintain a longstanding Hotmail address that everyone knows where to reach you, l can't see a reason to have a Hotmail account anyway. Yahoo! with its anti-spam tools that do work and Gmail trying hard to get your attention are just 2 of a number of better alternatives. For too long Hotmail has been unresponsive to changing customer needs, hence the popularity of Gmail.

[monty]

I'm using gmail already, but noticed my existing yahoo mail accounts were upgraded to 250mb recently...

Seems there is some kind of race going on

It's just that it's such a pain in the a*se to inform every contact you have that you have a new e-mail address, otherwise many more people would switch!

[RDN]

.... However,  if you have a free Hotmail account and you have already set up Hotmail to download to Outlook or Outlook Express, you can continue to use this feature....

Comment: My reading of this response/policy is, if you already have a free Hotmail account, then you will be allowed continued access using Outlook and/or Outlook Express, but new "free" accounts will not be aforded this privilege.

Your thoughts?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for going to the trouble to get this. I wish I could find the link to the FAQs on the Microsoft site that said they were going to terminate access by OE for current users. I'm sure the link came with the upgrade to 250MB notification email, but I can't find it now.

....Other than wanting to maintain a longstanding Hotmail address that everyone knows where to reach you....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

My thoughts, too. But I've already started switching my current emails to my new Gmail account (which works fine and is a lot faster to download to my PC than Hotmail), so it's not such a big deal to notify your contacts if you do it over a period of time, and while both accounts are working normally (i.e. have OE access).

And as for the upgrade to 250 MB, as I keep everything on my PC, I don't need a big storage space on the provider's server, so this "race" to give the most storage is - for me - insignificant compared with access by OE.

[george]

Felix at Radio Bangkok has got 20 accounts from google as promotion. email him at [email protected] or [email protected]