So long, Hotmail: Remaining users migrated to Outlook.com Hotmail addresses may live on, but the service we once knew as Hotmail is no more, now that Microsoft has transferred all 300 million active Hotmail accounts to its new, modernized Outlook.com webmail offering. "We want to give a huge 'Thank you' to all of you who have supported Hotmail over the years, for some of you, that's …
That period around 2003-5 was utterly bizarre even by MS web standards, and the point I finally stopped considering Hotmail as disposable, because it was just so fecking uphill to actually sign up that taking a cheese grater to your wedding tackle would arguably be less unpleasant.
I think at one point you had to have a 'passport' identity to sign up for Hotmail, but needed an email address to sign up to passport, but it couldn't be a Yahoo address because it just wouldn't work and send the confirmation mail. Of course you weren't actually told that, it just didn't arrive - but you could validate it by forcing a password reset on the as yet unvalidated account which WOULD go to the yahoo address and both reset the password and (apparently) validate the account. Or at least it would work afterwards to the limited extent Hotmail could ever have been considered to 'work'. Thereafter, on a semi random basis apparently tied to an obscure interpretation of the Mayan calendar, the passport login would again not accept the yahoo address as the user, while another account would work OK with the email addy of a private domain.
If that was Microsofts 'nudge' to persuade us to ditch yahoo 'cos it doesn't work', it must have been a very odd and probably hallucinogenically fueled strategy meeting chaired by the head of the office cleaning dept.
Hotmail was also quite unique in that it seemed to be pre-spammed. All you had to do to get your fix of penis pill offers and marriage proposals from attractive Ukrainians called Alina was sign up and log in, whereupon you'd find a selection of crap that had arrived before the welcome email.
I don't recall where live.com fitted in, except for my amazement on launch day that the simple search homepage from the worlds most highly valued company would render with elements apparently randomly ordered on a current browser - although perhaps that was another MS 'nudge' to point out my 'error' in using a Mac.
As for 'outlook.com', why? Its use seems to contain the implicit assumption that Outlook is a desirable brand, rather than the software equivalent of medieval instruments of torture, with a penchant for treating its config file as a doodle/scratch pad for randomly deciding which functions are going to inexplicably error today, complete with opaque, 'red herring' error codes. Maybe they could have bought eudora.com, which doesn't do much these days except remind us of what might have been.
Are you a woman?
I ask because " taking a cheese grater to your wedding tackle would arguably be less unpleasant".
There is NOWT worse than "itchy scrot" and a cheesegrater provides blissful relief from the condition.
Only eunichs and women wont ever experience the joy of a good chicken skin purse scratching session.
Hotmail was also quite unique in that it seemed to be pre-spammed. All you had to do to get your fix of penis pill offers and marriage proposals from attractive Ukrainians called Alina was sign up and log in, whereupon you'd find a selection of crap that had arrived before the welcome email.
It's possible spammers were polling the Hotmail SMTP servers for new valid user IDs, using the RCPT and/or EXPN commands, and candidate names derived from lists of existing email addresses and heuristics for generating new ones. At one time this was apparently common practice; I remember discussions of it on BUGTRAQ or one of the similar lists. (A simple countermeasure is to put a small delay in processing RCPT and EXPN, so it becomes less feasible to test candidate addresses.)
I always liked Hotmail for exactly the reasons you give, however it was also fairly easy to use as a backup to several other email accounts I keep.
As far as Outlook goes, I have to use it at work and I hate it! I am used to Yahoo, but not all that crazy about that one either, but I do find it quite easy to use. I like and use G-mail for my primary email service, but it too has its drawbacks....especially sharing attachments and such. Do not send any attachment to my Gmail account, I'll probably never get it, or even a hint that an attachment was even sent. I am about ready to give up on email altogether. I hear there is a mail service called Snail Mail. It's not free and it certainly is not all that fast, but it gets there, including attachments. Might have to look into that one.
"I didn't think anyone who wanted to be taken seriously ever used hotmail.
I wonder if that also applies to outlook.com."
Your opinions can not obviously be taken seriously.
I've used hotmail for years and years, before Gmail and its ilk.
Did that not occur to you? Never mind, you live and you learn.
Well I've used it since the beginning. Its survived several changes of company me living here and abroad, and has meant I haven't had to worry about maintaining my own domain name through all that time.
People I have met during those times can get hold off me, some of them I don't hear from for months or more. Everyone who for me its worth knowing and keeping some form of contact with gets my hotmail address. Everyone else gets the junk ones I create or emails that may eventually expire for some reason or another.
"I didn't think anyone who wanted to be taken seriously ever used hotmail.
I wonder if that also applies to outlook.com."
It is a very useful tool.
I started using hotmail when your only three options for an email address was the free ones (like hotmail, rocketmail etc), your ISP's email account or to register your own domain.
No point having your own domain unless you are using it to host a website too. I have no need of my own website.
ISP's email addresses are non-transferable. Leave that ISP and lose your email address. Even if you use AOL and leave the family home to your own AOL account, you cannot transfer ownership of your email account over to yourself.
I'll stick with my old Hotmail account... as long as it stays free.
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That makes as much sense as IBM offering free @lotusnotes.com addys.
Outlook is a bad name to email. Back when MS launched "Live Mail", user backlash was so great, they actually backpedaled and preserved the "Hotmail" brand. It's interesting that this time they did completely ditch it, instead of doing what they did with Live; they just stuck the Live interface to Hotmail and called it "Live Hotmail".
Been using Hotmail since 1996 for the same reasons other commenters have: it was the first free webmail/email service in the 'net, and I held to the addy because I didn't have to change addys whenever I jumped ISP or jobs. It was still called HoTMaiL back then, and not part of the MicroSoft Monopoly. Though there was a big time between 2002 and 2005 that I mostly switched to other options, as somehow Hotmail was stuck with 2MB o' space, even after Gmail came out.
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Can't we arrange for automatic execution bythe most painful ways possible for anyone who babbles about "amazing journeys"? They weaken the genetic pool and are often a red alert for poison in any layer of an organisation. You know it's true.
Be sad to see Michael Palin go down but no exceptions allowed.
who said: "Never trust anyone who talks about 'workshops' unless they work in light engineering". Or was it 'solutions' and chemistry. In any case by that principle Palin is safe.
On topic: I gave up on Hotmail the moment it demanded my phone number. So long and no thanks for all the spam MS.
That was another migration, done (and proudly announced by M$) some years ago. Some results from the Choccy Factory say this was in 2000. I remember it as later, but then at my age time does travel faster.
Needless to say, it involved all sorts of glitches and downtime. And about 4 times as much compute power to deliver the same service.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb496985.aspx is interesting reading. El Reg commented on it too http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/21/ms_paper_touts_unix/
It runs slower that Hotmail, because it downloads a lot of junk.
The right hand pane is a nuisance - full of junk I don't want, leaves less room for message titles, and I can't see any way to turn it off.
Logout is hidden - should be there up front.
Not impressed - generally a mess.
I think I will gradually be moving
You can turn off ads with the paid Outlook option.
Logout is in the same place that GMail has it, in a drop down by clicking on your account name. Not sure where the old Hotmail interface had it, I haven't seen the old Hotmail interface in a while.
Must be something with your system on the speed, because Outlook.com opens faster than my Gmail account (love how GMail always starts with 'loading'). Not sure how fast compared to old Hotmail.
Or you can turn off the ads with NoScript and Adblock Plus.
And if it's something his system, it's something with mine as well (running Firefox) because when I first try going into it and try to click on anything it's "oops, no, not going to do anything yet, still loading lots of crap, wait five seconds and then try again and maybe the whole page will have loaded..."
@Mr Fogey... Why aren't you using WLM or Outlook or even (shudder) Chunderbird as your mail client? No-one in this day and age should seriously be using a web browser to access their email! I've had a hotmail account since '97 and only point a web browser at it when checking mail while on-site or otherwise away from my laptop. As a chap said earlier, you get 100% portability across ISPs (forever, one hopes). And no ads if you use a mail client.
Oh, and as for the humorous digs about spam levels, MS's junk mail filter is pretty damned awesome these days. Unlike gmail, which I *do* use as my throwaway account; it's spam filters are as much use as a chocolate teapot.
I've had my Hotmail address since the 90s, although the oldest email I still have in the inbox is from 2001.
Some argue that Hotmail addresses can't be taken seriously, and I suppose when the addresses are things like john12398384@hotmail.com or thisisareallycoolemaillol@hotmail.com then yeah, it is just spammy looking.
But that's because of the address, not the domain. I have firstnamesurname@hotmail.com and I think that comes across as far more professional than the umpteen work email addresses I've had in that time or using a personal domain name which are all tied to a particular project or interest. I also think that personal domains like johnsmith.me.uk are totally lame. A sane Hotmail (or now Outlook) address comes across as neutral.
The new interface is a bit tidier, and I prefer it to Gmail.
There's only one single thing that I'd like to see implemented - IMAP.
I guess that it's time for my once annual trip to hotmail land. Somehow the damned thing never dies, and somehow I invariably end up using it for something once a year. Usually to test another e-mail account.
Anyhow, I had a relative complain bitterly to me last weekend that all of a sudden they couldn't figure how to send an email since it became outlook.com. They're the kind of average non-geek user that uses hotmail, and they were rightly pissed off.
(Not that Gmail is remotely intuitive until you've used it daily for a month)
-- Not that Gmail is remotely intuitive until you've used it daily for a month
Wait, there was a month during which gmail's interface was reasonably stable?
I've been on gmail since back when you needed to be invited (fortuitously right about when my previous ISP was going titsup), and all I recall is an endless round of "Now, where did they hide that functionality this week?" and later "WTF can possibly take so long to load". Still miles ahead of any of my other webmail accounts, but...
I've gone pretty much completely to IMAP today, other than that day when gmail IMAP would not work until one had logged into the the web interface and clicked the "Yeah, I see what you did there" button to "accept" that they had hidden yet more commonly-used actions behind a layer of indirection.
Based on other comments, IMAP does not (yet?) work for HoTMail. As a former Outlook (and OWA) victim, I feel their pain.
I got a "Live" mail account during my stint doing tech support for a telco so I can familiarize myself with how it worked. The telco partnered with MS to provide customers an email service and the telco didn't have good documentation on the MS email accounts the customers were being given in which we were tasked with supporting. That said after a couple years later I found I used it from time to time. By that point, the way I had it customized was kind of cute with it's customer friendly customizable themes. It had a very pleasing bamboo them going on it, the kind of thing end users look for and like in their user profiles and emails. Then the jarring change came without notice. I logged in about a month ago to suddenly find, without my approval, it was changed to the horribly unimaginative aesthetically dead white and blue utilitarian Outlook interface. Hell, if I wanted that I'd have used and email client like Windowsmail or Outook. This unfriendly and jarring change is not likely going to make friends of home users of the Hotmail or Live mail services.
My wife used hotmail for over a decade (maybe going all the way back to '96). MS made some changes earlier in the year that screwed up some of her settings (I think it was around SMTP send so it may have now been fixed) and then the forced change to Outlook.com interface which she thinks is horrendous. The upshot is that there's now one more happy Gmail user.
I'm sure her story is far from unique - I wonder how many hotmail users bailed? Unfortunately, I doubt we'll ever hear the answer.
I know it's a fair few. I know I'm finally working on jumping ship. the hotmail email gets far too much spammy shit sent to it. I've got a webhosting account I don't use that much so I'm just going to start up admin@mydomain... no wait too obvious for random shitty "Hey this URL is similar to yours AND for sale, wanna buy it for an inflated price while we squat on it?" maybe "Imbetterthanyou@mydomain.com"... need something better than admin.
Either way the only reason I haven't made the switch over yet is purely because I have so much history on msn, god knows how many accounts are linked to my hotmail, migrating to a new email host, and transferring over all my (useful) accounts to it will probably take a fair bit of time.
".....forced change to Outlook.com interface which she thinks is horrendous. The upshot is that there's now one more happy Gmail user."
I never understand this!
What’s so fking different? Left pain navigation centre pain email tree and viewing window, right is advertising bollox. There is very little difference. The functionality hasn't changed any, it does what it does.
What is the fking problem?
Just ridiculous.
In the first few months after launch, you had to be invited to join Gmail, and invites were thin on the ground. A black market in them grew until the invite limits were removed.
I was one of the first outside Google to get one (12 days after launch), as I "knew" a Googler on a mailing list I was on. I secured FirstnameLastname@gmail accounts for the whole family as a result.
Yes the old mail excite.com from 1995 ish i think (When used to go to the library in yam yam land to use this)
Armed with my 720k Floppys ready to raid the Aminet and get my amiga goodies once a week lol..
And yes 720k as Amiga 1200 could only read them..
Fun times though (When computing was fun)
Personally, I find the outlook.com website EXCELLENT. I've never used the Android app, I didn't even know it existed. My Android devices all have built in mail apps... and the latest versions are great so I've never felt any need to install a 3rd party application.
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"Deliberate attempt to "persuade" people onto WinPhones, perhaps?"
So... you are already an Android user and you decide to use Microsoft's product rather than the inbuilt Gmail one.
You load on Microsoft's product and it is terrible. The app is poor and doesn't work properly for your needs and you think Microsoft aren't very good at writing and designing apps for mobile.
However you think that, despite your enjoyment of the Android platform and your only experience of Microsoft in the Mobile arena is a terrible app, you would be persuaded to abandon your whole ecosystem to use a full software suite provider by the purveyor of crap software.
Or they could write a truly awesome app that is great to use and really showcases Microsoft abilities in the Mobile space and lead you to believe that Microsoft really gets the mobile user experience - if their Outlook app is this good (so much better than Gmail) that you might actually try out their platform next time to see how amazing all their apps are?
Which would be more persuasive in getting you to try out Windows Phone 8 and therefore be a better marketing tactic?
(If you have a Ford car that you really like but the only part that breaks or really annoys you is the gear lever which is made by Hyundai, would that persuade you to ditch your Ford and buy a Hyundai, or just make sure the next Ford you buy had no parts made by Hyundai?)
An acquaintance of mine uses BT/Yahoo mail for friends and family, and Hotmail for meeting men online for, ahem, naughty purposes. Imagine her surprise when she was switched to Outlook and had all her Y! contacts hoovered into it, followed by Skype doing the same - so that now all her naughty friends are visible on there too. Oh how I chuckled.
I have to use Outlook in work these days and it's just shit. Why is it beyond the ability of someone to come up with a replacement? Appointment handling is not rocket science, and actually displaying email in an in-box (something Outlook fails at at random intervals) even less so.
Why does crap software like this survive for so bloody long?
And, yes, I know outlook.com isn't the same thing really. But I needed to vent.
The 2010 Outlook fat client is simply fabulous IMO. It loads quickly, works smoothly, is powerful, has an excellent calendar, and (for me at least) never crashes. Why put up with a website to access and manage your email?
At work they have Lotus Notes: ' nuff said! Saying that I can send calendar items and meeting invites between Notes and Outlook without problems; if I send them to a colleague's iPhone they may work, they may not... :-D
"Let's be honest, Hotmail...
... the only time most of us ever looked at you was the time in the early 2000's, bla bla bla "
What about those using it 5 years earlier?
Outlook is so easy, if you can't get it to work for you, you need to ask yourself what are you doing wrong?
I never have any issues that other (probably slightly retarded in some way) users whinge on about.
When people subscribe to a forum I help moderate, our software sends an authentication e-mail, with a link to let the user authenticate himself. Hotmail, and hotmail alone, corrupts the url we send, so an administrator has had to programme a workaround. Let's hope and pray that Outlook.com does mess up in the same way.
Standards? MS has heard of them, I recall.
I know, I am an eternal optimist.
I got my Hotmail account in 1997 when I left university as it was the only way to have an email address back then as we didn't have online access at home (soon changed that though).
I've kept it as my main contact email for many reasons, had different work ones, even ones for websites I ran but have kept mine all this time as basically, it works!
Hotmail is a FREE service. Be grateful for that fact.
I experienced 'migration' problems in the changeover. I 'chanced' sending an e-mail to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. Guess what! It was passed on to Microsoft's 'elevation' team in Texas, who contacted me to resolve my problems.
That is itself it pretty extraordinary service for someone who is a FREE user of the Hotmail system.
What makes Microsoft stand out is that their Texas-based technician called me on my mobile ( from Texas) to sort the problems by applying remote diagnostics. He was on the line for an hour!!!
Thank you Microsoft.
Even better, yesterday I was called again, just to make sure everything was ok!
Who can doubt Microsoft's committment to provide service to an individual.
Yours sincerely,
Tom Reynolds.
UK.
"This meant communicating with hundreds of millions of people, upgrading all their mailboxes – equaling more than 150 million gigabytes of data – and making sure that every person's mail, calendar, contacts, folders, and personal preferences were preserved in the upgrade"
Mind boggling. You have to applaud MS here. Imagine the stress/man hours/grey hairs that must have taken.
MS gets slagged off enough in these forums. Today I say well done guys, and the free email service I have enjoyed for the past 15 years or thereabouts.
KISS is my creed. That's why I prefer to open docs with WordPad rather than Word, detesting bloat and incomprehensible icon blizzards as I do. Same with email - for years, having had to leave my dear old Eudora (what a gal) - I've used Outlook Express and POP'd all my email accounts down into that. I like to have my email stored locally so it can't be lost, spindled, mutilated or distributed. I've had a Hotmail addy since the nineties, but because of the horrendous spam exposure I experienced, this got relegated to the junk exposure category, and remains my email slut up to the present day.
down with the cloud, send software as a service to the guillotine
This is THE classic example of how FREE and SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE are inferior to purchased software as a physical possession, locally controlled and NOT cloud based. With software I own run and maintain, if a new and improved flavor comes along, I can ignore it. With hosted services, my opinion does not matter.
I would NEVER recommend or consent to ANY clod based anything, as long as a TOLERABLE alternative existed.
Nuts. I've had my hotmail address since the mid-90s, and I liked the way it looked. It seems that, just because something isn't glitzy or full of lots of bells and whistles, it must be changed. I don't like Outlook...I've never liked Outlook, even when I had to use it for work. Managing it doesn't fit my brain well.
I DO like my hotmail address, and it's nearly the oldest address I have. I liked that it sorted out spam well. Now I have to take more steps to do the simple processes I used to do before Outlook.
Rats. If it ain't broke don't fix it, but Microsoft seems to constantly have the need to fix things that ain't broke.
Phooey and lots of other much dicier words that are illegal to put into print. Outlook??? Gahhhh!
Seeing as Hotmail.com has redirected to Live.com for years, and now Hotmail.com and Outlook.com both redirect there, the only issue is the slightly pants new interface. I really don't see what the issue is. Your email will still go to your Hotmail account. It wouldn't surprise me if they quietly drop the re-branding after a couple of years, or re-brand it as something else. Anyone for Skype Mail?
After a month or two of my email client unable to connect, it came through a couple of weeks ago, so yes, it does look like they have ironed out some of the problems.
On the other hand, the most notable feature of the new web interface is the stupid "javascript not enabled" notificaiton. Yes, I know javascript is not enabled. How many people have javascript /accidentally/ disabled?
Taking shots at Hotmail? Talk about going after low-hanging fruit. Luckily, I have no dignity either.
The early SPAM filter was abysmal. I remember having to abandon an account because my inbox was flooded with dicks (more like, hot male, eh?) Sorry.
You soon would have to weed your mailbox daily, lest you let it get out of control.
When I first registered my account in 1997, there wasn't a whole lot of other options. Sure, there was your University email box, but you'd rather keep incriminating evidence far away from school.
I somehow seem to have two Microsoft log-ins now.
I use my Gmail address to log in to Skydrive, but I didn't want anyone else having my firstname.surname@outlook.com so I got that ( and use it).
So now I have my @outlook.com email addy aliased and telling everyone it's coming from my @gmail.com addy, which really is the one I use to log in to Skydrive, but not to outlook.com.
My account is one of the ones that have been Hotmail forever. Now at least once a day, I get a message there is a problem with the Outlook Certificate and cannot connect to my account. Fortunately, I have other accounts in other places so I can communicate with people. I am in the process of setting up an account with the same contacts as my Hotmail. Once I have everyone/everything changed, I am gone. I was never advised of the change and woke up one morning with the message I had been changed. I told them after a few days of usage I didn't like it, but apparently they don't care. So, when I am gone, they won't miss me. Thank you for the opportunity to make my opinion known.
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