Windows Live is just their latest attempt to unify their junk. I need that account to access my developer’s subscription and you can use ANY email address to access it.

Even though I owe my career to Microsoft (being a programmer and all), I steer clear of anything they do, for the reasons you stated plus so much more.

Zune, MSN, Hotmail, XBox, LiveSpaces, you name it, I’m not there.

Due to brilliant marketing and cutthroat competitiveness, they conquered the PC world, and that is all the ground I’ll voluntarilly concede to them.

All this self-centered pap to say, “Bro, I feel your pain.”

Agreed that the new interface is less than delightful to me. I have one Hotmail account but I access it through Outlook Express. I wish I’d gotten another account before they cut that option for new accounts (due to too much abuse—maybe also an attempt to sell premium).

I also have gmail, and use only OE to access it. I don’t know yet how well they handle spam; I’ll say that much for Hotmail, they do handle spam well.

As to Gordon’s comments, I agree concerning MS in general. MS has become like GM, early success (through business actions more than product superiority) and continued market dominance resulting from market dominance.

Superior product? MS loses out to: OS/2, which could have been the current standard if IBM hadn’t so completely muffed it; Lotus AmiPro, which had word-processing features in v2.0 (1992) which Word didn’t get until 2000, if then (AmiPro was replaced by WordPro, which was inferior due to attempts to make it like Word); QuattroPro and Paradox, for which Excel and Access would have been no match, except that the MS products took over the market while Borland tried to find out how a Windows app should work; Firefox, which has all the features MS should have known how to implement but didn’t; and finally (in this incomplete listing), Linux, the operating system of tomorrow, with way more stability and security, a way better means of finding and fixing bugs, and lacking—so far—only the hardware support (esp. for unusual devices) and application base to completely supplant Windows.

But as we know from the recent history of GM, a big company can go on for a long time without having a top-quality product. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with MS.

Clever! Nan’s pic with a story about Bush’s incentive plan! Amazing how easy it is to fool most of the people most of the time.

Gaaaaaah. Do you not download your email into a local mail program? If you had local records of it all, you could ditch the hotmail account after emailing people back through gmail enough that they would stop emailing the hotmail account.

Does Hotmail offer POP/IMAP (and SMTP outbound) access? If so, I recommend configuring your favorite local e-mail program (I wouldn’t whip Outlook with anything less than a 25-foot Cat 6 network cable) for it.

Indeed, I only check my Yahoo account about once every other week just so I can see if there is anything that got tossed into their “spam” folder by mistake (usually not). Other than that, I do not use webmail interfaces; they’re about as insecure an environment as Outlook.

…or, yeah, what steveegg said, keep the hotmail account but not have to look at the web interface every time you wanted to check it. Local email rules.

steveegg— I’m flattered that you think I’m technically competent enough to have a “favorite local e-mail program”.

Back in the day, I had endured enough hard drive failures to come to the conclusion that my e-mail would be more secure on hotmail’s redundant servers than on my own hard drive. Of course, once they just took a giant arbitrary wee-wee on customer goodwill in 2002, I’ve no basis to continue in that belief.

Also—wouldn’t that create a problem in checking your e-mail out of the office or away from home, when it’s on one computer or the other? I kind of like having the whole account available from anywhere I can get on the internet.

If I’m competent enough to have a favorite local e-mail program,… (of course, I also taught myself how to read, add, subtract and multiply before pre-school, so I’m a bad example).

Having something like Outlook or Thunderbird (my e-mail client of choice) handle the e-mail chores at home doesn’t automatically affect the ability to check on the mail at the office or on the road with the web interface. The way I have it set up on the laptop, it leaves all the mail (the Yahoo, the blog, and my ISP) on the server until I use the home machine to read it.

SeeDub—The tech weenies scoff at Outlook, but I’ve used Outlook Express for years with no problems … or at least no problems that I’m pretty damn sure would’ve come through IE anyway. If Hotmail has the POP/STMP service, they probably have an option for “keep a copy on the server,” which means that when you’re home, you can download and manipulate your mail in the local program, which means not having to put in your password etc., but still having it available on the web for when you’re away. I’ve been doing it exactly this way since I got Gmail 3 or 4 years ago. If I can, you can.

And now I see that steveegg just basically said the same thing, which is what I get for commenting after a glass of cab.

…except for the “until I use the home machine to read it” part. I’m saying, you can have it leave copies on the server even after you download it at home, that way everything is available in both places. Redundancy and travel convenience.

Me, I pull everything off at home because I don’t particuarily like leaving e-mail on remote servers (I have at times run up against the storage limits by doing that).

Anwyn or I can help walk you through setting that up (though I’d volunteer Anwyn ;-)

I don’t like leaving it on the servers either, particularly ones belonging to “We Record The Whole World, and Time-Stamp it Too” Google, but it’s better than not being able to manipulate old mail if necessary when I’m traveling.

And yeah, if you need help I’m there.

I delete everything off the server and keep it on my hard drive. I need access to my email archives regardless of whether I’m online or not.

See-Dub’s point about synching up your email accounts among several different platforms is a good one. I get around that by using a laptop and taking it everywhere I go.

Thanks all—I don’t have anything particularly embarrassing in my hotmail/gmail, other than Jamil Hussein’s full name, which is a little more touchy for him than it is for me. So I think I will continue to endure my present arrangement until my computing situation changes in a few months. I may be bother you guys then.