Re: OE and Hotmail
From: David Kelsey (david_kelseyNO_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/01/04
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Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 13:29:07 +0100
I have just signed up with Yahoo.co.uk for e-mail, and try as I might, I
can't find any reference to pop 3 or smtp being chargeable. Perhaps they
have taken pity on us impecunious UK pensioners, and let us off the hook. If
they start to charge, I guess I will have to look around for somewhere else,
or use the Ypops system. Re my ISP's mail service, they do charge - £7.50
per annum including pop3 and smtp - but they announced that at the start and
gave me the free choice to accept or not. They did not suck me in with a
free mail service over nine years, then chop it at literally no notice
whatsoever. When I first heard about the apparently secret MS intention to
chop OE access, the info put out said the change would take place gradually.
Well, I speak English as a mother tongue, and to me, gradually does not mean
instantly yesterday morning.
The main reason I don't simply ditch Hotmail is because I have countless
people out there who think my mail address is at Hotmail, and it is kind of
difficult to inform them all of a new address when I don't know who they all
are. I think my address has been unchanged since about 1995, when I ditched
Compuserve, before MS bought Hotmail, but by no means is everyone in my
address book. Fortunately, Yahoo mail seems to allow 5000 addresses in the
book, so that will be helpful in the future.
I don't know how you all use your mail service(s), but you are undoubtedly
very well informed on the whole process, whereas I am not, and e-mail is a
convenience for me rather than my whole life. I switch the machine on, go
and have a coffee, and when I come back, all my messages are nicely in OE,
where I can scroll and click through them at the same speed as I can any
other file on my machine. I do realise that downloading takes the same time
whatever method is used, but with the OE connection, I only have to download
once, and that without any input from me. By contrast, if I use just
Hotmail, every time I open it, I have to download stuff in all directions,
because the files are not on my computer. Obviously this takes longer. While
it has speeded up since we have had broadband access here, I pity the
thousands of dialup customers who just can't get broadband. And I do realise
that if I remove a file from the server, it will disappear from OE. I
synchronise all folders and address books, and normally never go anywhere
near Hotmail itself, so all management of the mail is done from OE with very
little bother. I can also move interesting e-mails or newsgroup messages
directly into various archives without having to think about exceeding my
storage limit. It is all very nice and sensible, just like a well run
office. I give thanks to Microsoft for helping me to do all this for so long
without charge.
Regarding the SP2 comment, have a look at KB article 878462, which seems to
imply that you only get the immediate chop if you are running XP with SP2.
Otherwise, if it refers to all OSs, why say it? Who is going to get the six
months' or whatever notice that was talked about? And what made you think I
had uninstalled SP2?
Business use - I don't include the people who just use a company e-mail
address for private mail, or small firms who operate like private
individuals (me for instance). But do you ever see IBM@hotmail.com or any
other substantial undertaking relying on Hotmail for its communications?
Here in the UK, the fashionable business ISP for mail is Pipex, which no
doubt makes charges for various aspects, and is highly professional. No
serious business would be seen dead using Hotmail. Perhaps the people who
scream about losing mail should have used OE to manage it.
On the spam topic, it is very frequently said in the newsgroups that Hotmail
attracts spam, probably because it has so many users. The people I know who
do not use Hotmail can't understand my constant bitterness about spam, since
they almost never get any. So maybe all this will be a blessing in disguise.
I can't believe you think Internet Explorer should be sold separately. It is
a major promotional item for MS, and if it isn't ostensibly free, or is
unbundled, it would cause some big problems. If MS also decided, presumably
with your blessing, to charge separately for Paint (the Hotmail among
graphics programs), and Outlook and Outlook Express, and the Roxio CD
burner, and Movie Maker, and Frontpage, and Wordpad, and Notepad, and
Windows Media Player and so on and on, what would they use for promotion?
Without the goodies, there is nothing very much to say about an OS, is
there? At least, not to the millions of uninformed purchasers out there.
Look what happened to all the stripped OSs there have been over the last
fifteen years. And for me, Hotmail and OE is just the same as all the other
free apps. MS fought a major court battle to avoid having to unbundle
Internet Explorer. Who would buy it if it were in a straight fight with all
its competitors? Even poor old Netscape might still be around. I certainly
liked it when it was free and IE didn't exist.
For Mr. Miller - I saw the header re Yahoo - have you kept that on your
Hotmail server for two years? And all your other mail? Please forgive my
ignorance, but what do you mean when you say everybody you know uses their
browser to send mail? And what does 'grandfathered' mean?
You know, I am sure, that MS is handing back substantial sums out of profits
to its shareholders - I believe I heard a figure of $10 billion mentioned.
Would you agree that it would be nice if they also lobbed some towards the
users who made those profits for them, without the constant whingeing about
piracy and spam costs etc.?
David Kelsey
N. Miller wrote:
> In article <#Y3iltvpEHA.2184@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl>, David Kelsey
> says...
>
>> I didn't mean Hotmail would only work with OE, just that it is a
>> pain used alone. Obviously, if all transactions have to be done via
>> the internet, they will be slower than if done on your own machine
>> once downloaded, which is automatic anyway.
>
> It takes the same amount of time to move a kilobyte of data, whether
> it is moved by POP3, or HTTP. HTTPMail uses HTTP. All email
> transactions, whether POP3, or HTTP, are done via the Internet. The
> only difference between POP3/HTTPMail access and straight HTTP (Web)
> access is that you get all of the messages in one shot, and, once
> stored locally, you can read them at your leisure. But, message for
> message, any one email takes an equal amount of time to get from the
> server to your computer; for your given connection.
>
>> The basic Hotmail service will continue to be free; it is just the OE
>> connection has been stopped.
>
> Nor did I say otherwise.
>
>> Why would a spammer pay for a Hotmail Premium
>> account if OE is disconnected, any more than he will now?
>
> He won't. He never did pay. But the spammer did develop tools to
> abuse the WebDAV process for sending email from the client to the
> spam victims. The spammer developed automated scripts to create an
> array of Hotmail accounts, to use each Hotmail account to the max
> (100 messages per day), and MSN staff was hard pressed to keep them
> at bay. By limiting WebDAV access only to paying customers, these
> spam tools are just as cut off from WebDAV access as the rest of us.
>
> The spam tools would probably still work if the spammer were willing
> to pay for the Hotmail account, but it is a long shot that he could
> send enough spam through a paid Hotmail account to make up the cost,
> and then some, before he was "TOSsed".
>
>> MS claim 'only' 10 to 15% of Hotmail's 100 million users actually
>> have a connection with OE, and of these, they claim most don't use
>> it more than once.
>
> I have no reason to doubt that. Almost everybody I know who has a
> Hotmail account, or even a MSN Internet Access account, uses their
> browser to send me email.
>
>> They don't say how they know this.
>
> Probably the same way that I know this. From an email message sent
> through Hotmail, composed in MS Outlook Express:
>
>> Received: from 64.161.30.246 by bay22-dav15.bay22.hotmail.com with
>> DAV; Fri, 01 Oct 2004 04:17:17 +0000
>
> From an email message composed in Firefox while on the MSN Hotmail
> site:
>
>> Received: from 64.161.30.246 by by22fd.bay22.hotmail.msn.com with
>> HTTP; Fri, 01 Oct 2004 04:15:21 GMT
>
> Email sent using MSOE has "with DAV", email sent through browser has
> "with HTTP". Kind of hard to miss that difference.
>
>> So 85 to 90% of Hotmail users will continue exactly as
>> before - that's a sure way to get rid of spammers, then, isn't it?
>
> Actually, yes. Since the free access users won't be able to abuse the
> WebDAV access to send email, that should cut down on the amount of
> spam carrying the "with DAV" headers. All the spam sent through
> Hotmail servers that I ever got had "with DAV"; none had "with HTTP".
>
>> I really do not understand MS's thinking on this.
>
> You aren't really trying too hard...
>
>> On the one hand, they say it is to prevent spam...
>
> Which it will...
>> ...but nothing is changing for 90% of Hotmail users.
>
> Nor should it.
>
>> Maybe they want more money, as if they needed it, but they aren't
>> going to get it, are they? Or at least they are only going to get a
>> proportion of the 10 to 15% of users to cough up. I don't
>> understand how MS can at a moments' notice stop people using OE with
>> Hotmail.
>
> There was no contract with MSN to continue to provide that service in
> perpetuity. If there is, and you signed it, take it to court.
>
>> Without even giving them a couple of days to make new mail
>> arrangements or copy their folders etc. out of Hotmail, let alone
>> notify all their contacts about a change of address. Can they have
>> gone collectively barmy?
>
> It took me all of five minutes per account, on accounts that are
> grandfathered in for access through March, or April of 2005, to move
> and clear my email. At this time, two of three accounts have been
> completely removed from MSOE. The third will remain for come limited
> use and testing.
>
>> All this seems to be tied up with the problems of webDAV and its
>> vulnerability. So why not use pop, like everyone else? No-one is
>> forcing MS to use http.
>
> Yep. And, if you haven't noticed, nobody else is offering free POP3
> access any more, either. Juno has announced that they will end free
> access to their POP3 servers by Dec. 1, 2004. There proprietary mail
> client will also cease to work for free access on that date.
>
> Eudoramail no longer offers free POP3 access to their accounts, and
> only grandfather those accounts which have it if they access at least
> once in every thirty days.
>
> Yahoo! discontinued free SMTP/POP3 access around April, 2002. USA.com,
> USA.net, and others that once had free POP3 access ended free access
> even before Yahoo! did. I have watched the free POP3 access services
> dropping like flies since 1999. All have moved to fee based POP3
> access, as a premium service, or discontinued it.
>
>> I think they have lost the plot.
>
> They were among the last holdouts for a dying product; free client
> access email. All that remains appears to be AOL/CS2K/Netscape
> Webmail. I wonder how long they will last?
- Next message: Steve Cochran: "Re: How to be organized and get the best out of life?"
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- In reply to: N. Miller: "Re: OE and Hotmail"
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