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 21:17:19 +0100
Thanks for your informative comments. You make some good points, if I may
say so. I guess I was so pissed off by the totally unexpected clamping down
on my OE/Hotmail activities, I got off on a tangent. Take a look at the
link:
http://www.wininsider.com/news/?7475
In this article from Windows IT Pro, it says quite clearly and
unequivocally, in the words of a Microsoft spokeswoman, the following:
"Microsoft won't immediately shut off nonpaying users who have enabled
Outlook or Outlook Express access to Hotmail. Instead, the company will
phase out those customers over several months and give them plenty of
warning that the change is coming. "Free Hotmail customers who want to use
WebDAV have two choices," Richardson said. "They can opt for Hotmail Plus,
which offers 2GB of storage space and 20MB attachments for just $19.95 a
year. Or they can subscribe to MSN Premium." Microsoft will continue to
enable WebDAV for customers of both products, she said."
What, even though webDAV is so leaky?
Plenty of warning in Microsoft's terms appears to mean about 8 seconds. But
as far as I know, only for those who have SP2 installed, as the following
quote suggests:
"If you are running Outlook Express on a Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2
(SP2)-based computer, you receive the following error message:
Could not connect to Hotmail as username@hotmail.com.
Hotmail no longer allows email access via Outlook Express for free
Hotmail/MSN accounts."
Other customers, who do not have SP2 installed, get a different, and rather
more polite message, starting with "unknown error". Damn silly and not
untypical error message, since they know perfectly well what the error is.
No mention is made of the promised several months warning.
Note the two choices - either $19.95 per annum or rather more if you go for
the MSN option. I think they have a third choice, which is the one I shall
be taking. I do know the actual cost is not too bad, even though higher
than zero, and higher than my ISP charges by about 100%. And of course,
just as with OE, if I don't use Hotmail's storage, I can have about 132GB of
storage on my own machine. File sizes, I believe, are not restricted to any
degree in AOL, not that I would dream of allowing them on my machine, but my
granddaughter has a good laugh at my expense when I say I can't mail her a
.bmp or receive a movie.
My ISP allows 30MB storage, for what that is worth, but they don't say how
big an attachment I can send. I shall enquire. The £7.50 is for one pop 3
mailbox, accessible from any mail program or webmail. But I probably won't
use them if I can find a free one. Why would I?
What's MSN Calendar when it's at home? Is it the same as Schedule Plus?
Maybe as they have relented on charging for it, they will relent on the
present plans as well.
BT doesn't give anyone anything free, which is one reason they are in deep
caca at the moment. I use them just for the line rental, with a different
company for my calls, which cost £12.99 per month flat rate, all calls in
the UK free, calls to the States 3p per minute. BT does not get that
business other than that they sell the calls to my provider, having a
monopoly. None of the other things you mention are free, but then they
never said they would be. However, we get less and less snail mail, and
soon there will be free competition on the other fronts, because of the
intransigence and general inefficiency of the postal workers and managers.
Thanks for the warning about the 5000 contacts. What is the limit in
Hotmail? I don't have 5000 contacts, of course, but it is nice to feel free
to have as many as I need.
If all Hotmail accounts are personal, that rather confirms my stated
perception that business people don't use it.
With so much spam going through Hotmail, it's a wonder MS doesn't shut it
and start again. With a month or two notice, of course.
I may not have much idea of capitalist theory, but I do have about thirty
years of being managing director and main board director of public
companies, so perhaps my idea is of practical capitalism rather then theory.
I have not suggested that much or any of MS's profits are generated by
Hotmail, as I don't know, and I don't suppose you do either. And I am not
talking about dividends in the ordinary sense, but a cash payment to
shareholders out of surplus accumulated funds that MS can't find an outlet
for. There isn't much left for them to buy. This is in addition to
dividends. Don't kid yourself that shareholders, of which I have been one
for many years, altruistically lend money to firms to help them on their
way. They operate in the main from enlightened self-interest, which is
exactly what I think Microsoft should do vis-a-vis their customers. Once
the investors have bought shares at a launch, when most of the money goes to
the original shareholders rather than the company, the ownership of shares
by investors does not assist the company in any way, since the benefits
belong to the shareholders.
I have always thought that the workers in a company and the customers of a
company, especially the latter, contribute a great deal more to that
company's success than do shareholders. Shareholders rarely have any
loyalty except to their money, and will move their funds about to suit
themselves. That's how they make money. There is not much to be made in
dividends, as a rule, with yields frequently in the 3% bracket or
thereabouts, so capital appreciation is the only way to get a substantial
return. The workers and the customers, on the other hand, do have loyalty
to the company as a rule, if only partly through inertia, and ought where
possible to be rewarded for that. When the crunch comes, it won't be the
shareholders who bail a company out, because they will be long gone. It
will be the customers who continue to place orders, and the workers who
continue to make the goods, who will be the salvation, if salvation is to be
found. That's why salesmen take customers out to lunch and to night clubs
and the like, and why firms give their workers bonuses and Christmas
goodies.
Microsoft can't take us all out to lunch, but they might at least
demonstrate some loyalty by not seeking to grab every last penny, and once
in a while, giving something back to the people who give them their profits.
Bill very commendably has set up a fund of about $10 billion a year, I
believe, for charities, which I applaud, but it is, after all, our money he
is giving away. If he is also giving sauce to the shareholder goose, and
indeed to his workforce, he might also give some to the customer gander.
Here endeth the lesson for today. You may stand on your chairs to applaud.
David
> Some observations and facts upon reading your epistle, Mr. Kelsey, in
> no particular order:
>
> Please keep in mind that MSN/Hotmail is still a free email account.
> Accessing the account in OE or OL is what MSN/Hotmail is beginning to
> charge for...and cheaply, too: At US$19.95/year, Hotmail Plus costs
> 5½¢ a day (that's .044 € or .03 £) for unlimited sending/receiving. For
> that money, in addition to the ability to access the accounts in
> a Mail Client, subscribers also get:
>
> - 2GB storage space (vs. the default 250MB inbox),
>
> - the ability to send/receive attachments of up to 20MB (vs. 10MB
> default; Try either in your ISP's account!),
>
> - no account expiration (as long as your accouns in good
> standing), and
> - no ads in your messages.
>
> All MSN/Hotmail accountholders also have access to MSN Calendar
> again, a privilege withdrawn from free accounts about a year ago,
> which can be shared with other MSN/Hotmail accountholders.
>
> Tell me this, does BT give you your telephone service, local,
> national and international, free of charge? Does the Royal Mail let
> you send letters, postcards and packages all over the world for free?
> (Of course, Hotmail is about as reliable as BT and Royal Mail when it
> comes to on time delivery <eg> and all three couldn't care less about
> making anything convenient for you.)
>
> You heard it here first: If you do indeed have 5,000 contacts in your
> Yahoo addressbook, I advise you *not* to synch it with Address
> Book...unless you don't care about being able to *see* your contacts
> listed in Address Book or Contacts pane.
>
> All Hotmail accounts are personal accounts. Using a Hotmail account
> for business purposes is a violation of MSN/Hotmail's User Agreement.
>
> As http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=878462#appliesto clearly points
> out, the new policy applies to all currently supported versions (5.5,
> 6 and 6 SP1) OE versions in all currently supported OSS
> (Win98/98SE/ME, kinda/sorta, and Win NT, Win2K, WinXP and WinServer
> 2003, not just WinXP SP2.
> The problem with spam doesn't necessarily refer to *received* spam
> but, mainly, sent spam, most of it virus-laden. How much spam is
> there these days?
>
> "Spam filtering company Postini is reporting that the percentage of
> email processed by them which was identified as spam has dropped
> between the months of August and September (2004). Unfortunately, the
> number only dropped from 76% to 75%, meaning that the vast majority
> of email is still spam. According to Postini, more than 5.6 billion
> pieces of email went through their system during the month of
> September, and they stopped nearly 79 million instances of viruses."
> cf. http://spam.weblogsinc.com/entry/8928259724858914/
>
> Mind you, that's just mail that went through Postini's system!
>
> While MS may be beginning to return some shareholders money in the
> form of dividends, I can assure you that *none* of these monies was
> generated by Hotmail. As for "lobbing" some of that money "towards
> the users who made those profits for them," MS is doing just that. MS
> investors, by "loaning" money to MS in the form of purchasing
> shares of stock, helped "make that profit for MS", not Hotmail
> users. Have you no idea of capitalist theory? David Kelsey wrote:
>> 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
> <snip>
- Next message: Scot: "How to stop automatic "checking mail" at OE launch?"
- Previous message: Bruce Hagen: "Re: Nonworking Links"
- In reply to: PA Bear: "Re: OE and Hotmail"
- Next in thread: David Kelsey: "Re: OE and Hotmail"
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