Windows Live Hotmail

I have had two Hotmail accounts for many years: one for professional use; the other for personal.

In all these years the formatting has undergone redesign about four times -- each time it is bothersome. I wish they would leave well enough alone, as they say.

All in all I have been pleased with this email service, and it is free; I have never upgraded to a paid account.

Other than format redesign, my only other complaint would be that I am often shut out when trying to access my account when out of the country. But I realize that this is a security issue for my own well-being. Otherwise I am pleased with this email service. It was a professor who turned me onto it back in the day.

The interface is pretty intuitive to use.

Four stars.

EN CUANTO A ALMACENAMIENTO Y ENVIO ES LEVEMENTE LENTO. CUANDO NO SE USA COTIDIANAMANTE SE CIERRA Y ESO HACE QUE DE REPENTE COSAS QUE NECESITAMOS COMO PRUEBA O DEBEMOS ARCHIVAR SEAN PERDIDAS.

With so much money why can't they build something that is user friendly. If they can't come up with it themselves they can always just look at yahoo or gmail. Very annoying that they are not moving with times

Message Judy about three months ago had a good connection with her right off the bat we've enjoyed a lot together already going to different places going to different history places it was the best thing ever happened to me in my life

Hotmail was the first email service I used. It was suggested by a librarian when I needed an email to complete an activity I was doing at that library. Until I got my own computer I used it for business activities and pretty much everything if I happened to be at that library. I used other email services for other things, but out of habit I often used Hotmail.

Where I have recently gotten in trouble is the fact that for years, I have printed out the text of newspaper articles by copying and pasting and sending it to myself. It is cheapest to print if I use a service that doesn't leave the right side of the page blank. I would send emails to my Lycos account, from which I could print the text using a font that wasn't too large. And if I remember correctly, I was able to use plain text. Hotmail made that more complicated in recent years so I would copy everything into a plain text box first. Over time I also started sending myself lists of things to do and web sites I wanted to look at later.

Lycos changed its font and I found myself having to make other arrangements for printing, but to save what I was printing (so I could see what I already had, for various reasons), I would send it to my Hotmail account.

Oh, it wasn't actually "Hotmail" any more, but that's not that important, since it seemed to work the same way. Although moving to folders became tricky since I had to select that option from a list.

For various reasons, I started combining the Lycos sent emails into a larger email to print, and doing this by creating a Hotmail email was becoming increasingly difficult. At one library it was just impossible. At another it was just frustrating as I would have to wait and wait for the large blocks of text I moved around to appear. And in recent months, "making other arrangements" has been the default, not the exception. I found myself having to use a plain text box just to create the emaiI I would send from Lycos. And no longer could I save the really really long email I was printing using Hotmail. The worst thing was when copying and pasting from Hotmail became impossible. How do I get rid of what I have done in my list of things to do? Well, actually, I sent it to Lycos, so I guess I can do it from there.

More frustration: never use the back button. It won't do what you think it will. Figure out where you were and go back there. Doing a search? Don't limit your search to a folder. You'll never be able to go back to searching all the emails.

And no message saying your email was sent.

With Google Chrome, there was endless frustration as I tried to copy and paste from an email I had sent myself from, say Yahoo. I discovered at one library that with Internet Explorer I could do everything more easily and even with plain text. No such luck at another library, which was where I discovered the most recent changes.

Now, it is no longer a matter of doing complicated activities Hotmail wasn't designed for. I was told to click to be introduced to the changes. News flash! I have just minutes to do this and I don't have time to study all your changes! Just make it go back to how it was. I can't even tell if all the emails I received are there. Wait, conversations? That makes it impossible to find anything. I can't click on a single email, which is what I need. I click on a conversation and have to scroll and scroll to find what I need. Remember, I send myself very long emails. In the past I created very, very long emails in order to print. Could that be why the computer froze? Could it be that it tried to load every single very long and very very long email?

Also, when I reply now, and I have to remember how Gmail does it to find the button, it gives me a blank screen, not what I'm replying to. I might want to send the same email back to myself, with some details removed. Oh, it's coming back, whether I want it or not. No matter how long. This is ridiculous.

At least there are folders. Gmail doesn't even have those.

The good news is that with Internet Explorer at this one library, little has changed. The inbox looks just like it did before and there are no conversations. I may have to limit myself to using Hotmail there.

Not sure when things changed but it has been about five years and I didn't realize I needed to update this. Things have gotten much better. Well, maybe not much better. Most of the time I can see individual emails, but the search function is a problem as it doesn't simply list emails. There is one "preferred" list which just confuses me. I don't want "Top results". What if what I want isn't there? Then I remember to look under "All results".

I still can't use the back button because sometimes it'll give me my inbox and sometimes it won't do anything. And then there are the times I want something and it just gives me what's in such and such a folder. One time I ended up with my oldest emails and don't know how I got the newest ones back. Oh, this is fun. Before I got anywhere I got sent to whatever I was doing before I went to Hotmail.

Still no plain text, or at least what is called plain text won't give me what I want. I have to do that somewhere else and copy it.

I can't recall what happens if the email is sent. I think I have to look in the sent folder. It's there even if I was working on a draft and I get the message saying that's just a draft and it wasn't sent. Yes, it was, in most cases. I think. Although if I'm working on two emails at once, sometimes one disappears and I have to do a search. I have to look for the word "draft" because it must have gotten saved automatically as a draft. At least that's something Hotmail does that Yahoo doesn't do, though that's only because the Yahoo that works doesn't have that feature. Yes, to get plain text that really is, I have to give up saving drafts.

What a relief this has gone back to something I can sort of deal with.