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Microsoft to charge for Hotmail w/ OE - Please DON'T!!

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keeps99 - 27 Sep 2004 23:17 GMT
Microsoft has announced they will start charging extra to allow users to use
Outlook and Outlook Express with Hotmail Accounts.  Please, Don't Do it!  I
like saving my messages off and keeping them offline.  Offline, I have every
email I have sent or received in the last  4 years...  This is wrong - there
must be some way to get around it - there must be another solution!!  PLEASE!
Please listen to your user community.  User's Unite.  Voice your opinion!!

News Item Follows:

Microsoft Adds New Hotmail Fee

To curb spam, users will be charged for accessing their e-mail via Outlook.

Joris Evers, IDG News Service
Monday, September 27, 2004
Microsoft will start charging for a Hotmail feature that allows users of the
Web-based e-mail service to access their e-mail using the Outlook e-mail
client.

 
Microsoft is making the move not to increase the number of paying Hotmail
users but because the feature is being abused by senders of spam, says Brooke
Richardson, lead product manager for MSN at Microsoft.

"Essentially what spammers do is create scripts so they can rapid-fire
e-mail from Outlook or Outlook Express and pop off a hundred e-mails from
each of those Hotmail accounts in rapid succession," Richardson says. "On
certain days we have seen tens of thousands of Hotmail accounts set up and
spamming in this matter."

To prevent abuse of the feature, Microsoft will stop making it available to
new users of free Hotmail and MSN mail accounts starting this week. Current
users can continue to use the feature but will be asked to become Hotmail
subscribers over the coming months. By April next year, the feature will no
longer be available for free, Richardson says.

The Hotmail and MSN mail feature is known as WebDAV, after the Web-based
Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol that enables it. It is
enabled on about 5 percent, or 9.4 million, of the 187 million active Hotmail
accounts, according to Richardson.

For the Greater Good?
While the decision to make the link with Outlook or Outlook Express a paid
service won't be welcome news to some users, Microsoft had to take the step
"for greater good" of the Hotmail and e-mail community, Richardson says.

Furthermore, rival Web-based e-mail providers such as Yahoo already charge
for similar functionality, she says.

Other actions that Microsoft has taken to prevent abuse of Hotmail by
senders of spam include a limit on outgoing messages of 100 per day on free
accounts and an extra validation requirement when signing up for an account,
Richardson says. "We do a lot of stuff in terms of understanding the
characteristics of spammers so we can watch for them and shut them down when
we see them," she says.

Users who want to use WebDAV to link their Hotmail or MSN mail to an Outlook
can subscribe to Hotmail Plus, which also offers 2GB of e-mail space and an
account that doesn't expire, for $19.95 per year, or to MSN Premium for
$99.95 a year.
PA Bear - 27 Sep 2004 23:31 GMT
Yahoo did the same thing a few years ago (for US- and CA-based accounts).
If you want to retain access to your free Hotmail account in OE and OL, pony
up the US$19.95/year (which BTW is the same price Yahoo charges you).
Signature

~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE)

> Microsoft has announced they will start charging extra to allow users to
> use
[quoted text clipped - 71 lines]
> account that doesn't expire, for $19.95 per year, or to MSN Premium for
> $99.95 a year.
Pop - 27 Sep 2004 23:52 GMT
Let 'em charge:  They need to lose subscribers at AOL anyway.
These days, $19.95 is a greedy price for an account. Especially
when you consider what they get for their money.  You can get
better accounts at almost any decent ISP nowadays for <
$10/month; unlimited, multiple accounts, etc etc.

| Yahoo did the same thing a few years ago (for US- and CA-based accounts).
| If you want to retain access to your free Hotmail account in OE and OL, pony
[quoted text clipped - 74 lines]
| > account that doesn't expire, for $19.95 per year, or to MSN Premium for
| > $99.95 a year.
Tom Pepper Willett - 28 Sep 2004 00:01 GMT
$19.95 a year is greedy compared to $10 per month?

| Let 'em charge:  They need to lose subscribers at AOL anyway.
| These days, $19.95 is a greedy price for an account. Especially
[quoted text clipped - 117 lines]
| Premium for
| | > $99.95 a year.
PA Bear - 28 Sep 2004 01:09 GMT
<ROFL>

> $19.95 a year is greedy compared to $10 per month?
>
[quoted text clipped - 101 lines]
>>>> account that doesn't expire, for $19.95 per year, or to MSN Premium for
>>>> $99.95 a year.
DGuess - 29 Sep 2004 03:33 GMT
I take it you skipped math in school.

$19.95 per YEAR equals out to $1.67  (pronounced one dollar and sixty-seven
cents) per month

Should I break this down further to perhaps per minute?

$1.67 is less than $10.95.  Notice the extra digit in the latter, menaing
there are four digits compared to three digits and three is still less than
four.

This is an example of three digits:       111
This is an example of four digits:         1111

Notice how there are more in the bottom example than there is in the top
example.

Ok, now we have a counting exercise, count with me:

1 (one)
2 (two)
3 (three)
4 (four)
5 (five)
6 (six)
7 (seven)
8 (eight)
9 (nine)
10 (ten)

Each time you count to the next digit, you add one to it's value.
1 + 1 = 2
2 + 1 = 3
3 + 1 = 4
4 + 1 = 5
5 + 1 = 6
6 + 1 = 7
7 + 1 = 8
8 + 1 = 9
9 + 1 = 10

Now, count how many numbers 10 is greater than 1.

> Let 'em charge:  They need to lose subscribers at AOL anyway.
> These days, $19.95 is a greedy price for an account. Especially
[quoted text clipped - 117 lines]
> Premium for
> | > $99.95 a year.
Ron Bogart - 29 Sep 2004 03:45 GMT
In news:%233fDoycpEHA.648@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl,
DGuess <majik@mindspring.oops> gathered his thoughts and came up with these
words:
> I take it you skipped math in school.
>
[quoted text clipped - 38 lines]
>
> Now, count how many numbers 10 is greater than 1.

Thanks for the reminder Majik- that digital notation crap always messed me
up.    ;^)

Signature

Ron Bogart {}  ????
Associate Expert
Expert Zone - www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
"Life is what happens while we are making other plans."

DGuess - 29 Sep 2004 06:17 GMT
> Thanks for the reminder Majik- that digital notation crap always messed me
> up.    ;^)

I had to hunt up my Weekly Reader to go back over it again <G>
Vanguardx - 28 Sep 2004 03:58 GMT
> Microsoft has announced they will start charging extra to allow users
> to use Outlook and Outlook Express with Hotmail Accounts.  Please,
[quoted text clipped - 60 lines]
> e-mail space and an account that doesn't expire, for $19.95 per year,
> or to MSN Premium for $99.95 a year.

And yet if you read
http://news.com.com/Hotmail+to+wean+users+from+free+export+tool/2100-1038_3-5381
740.html

then it says you will continue having WebDAV access (via Outlook
[Express]) until March or April of 2005.  So you have a few months
still.  Time to find someone else, like use a freebie Yahoo Mail account
and use YahooPOPs to access it.  "POP Goes the GMail" is another similar
HTTP-to-POP3 proxy for use with GMail.  I haven't used GMail so I cannot
comment on it, and probably won't use GMail since Yahoo upped its quota
on freebie accounts to 100MB and I didn't even have a problem with just
6MB because the account was continually emptied by using YahooPops.

There is no way to create a new Yahoo Mail account using YahooPOPs.  You
could use Hotmail Popper to provide POP3 access to a freebie Hotmail
account, and it also will not let you use it to create new accounts.
With Yahoo Mail and Hotmail, you have to use the web interface to open a
new account which requires you enter the graphical text string generated
during the signup.  So while you will lose HTTP/WebDAV access via
Outlook [Express] to freebie Hotmail accounts, you could still use
Hotmail Popper.  Outlook [Express] has always had problems polling
multiple HTTP accounts which doesn't occur when using Hotmail Popper
(since all Hotmail accounts get aggregated into the Inbox instead of
into their own separate message stores, and which means you can then use
rules against those messages).  Alas, Hotmail Popper is no longer free
(and why I dumped it and went with YahooPOPs against a Yahoo Mail
account).

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\ - 28 Sep 2004 15:20 GMT
Once again Billy Boy is not rich enough. I for one will not use my Hotmail accounts and will close them.  I have had one since 1995. If that is the way M$$$$$$$$Soft wants to play, then they will find Hotmail an empty business. If you do not want to pay for what you received for free the go to someplace else like www.myway.com.   I am sure they are not going to start charging and they don't have the pop-ups & ads running all over their pages. What next M$soft, charging for the use of your search engine .... lets see that will run you about $20 a year also or may be just a buck a search.  The hackers are not going to close the internet .... the money hungry business's like M$soft will. Hotmail was not that great anyway. Hell Microsoft isn't any better. Next thing you know Billy Boy will be the King of the world because he bought it all.  Wise up Microsoft, there are other companies out there and you can't continue to buy the world.  Someday you will come crashing down hard, one to many legal battles, will suck the deep pockets dry. I for one am waiting for that day.
Signature

************
"old" devildog
Simper Fi
************

| Microsoft has announced they will start charging extra to allow users to use
| Outlook and Outlook Express with Hotmail Accounts.  Please, Don't Do it!  I
[quoted text clipped - 56 lines]
| account that doesn't expire, for $19.95 per year, or to MSN Premium for
| $99.95 a year.
Vanguardx - 28 Sep 2004 20:29 GMT
""old" devildog" <teymayATcableNOSPAMone.net>
wrote in news:uebmaZWpEHA.3716@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl:
> ... If you do not want to pay for what you
> received for free the go to someplace else like www.myway.com.   ...

And how is MyWay a solution?  You are still stuck using a web interface
to your e-mail.  Hotmail isn't going away.  They are just disabling the
WebDAV interface so *local* e-mail clients cannot connect to a Hotmail
account.  The webmail interface to Hotmail will still exist.  So your
proposal was to replace the Hotmail webmail interface with MyWay's
webmail interface.  That is NOT what the OP wants.  The OP (and me) want
a *local* e-mail client where we can manage our e-mails.  Outlook
[Express] provided that.  However, I had several Hotmail accounts and
always would run into problems when multiple HTTP accounts were defined
in Outlook [Express], so I dumped the WebDAV interface and started using
Hotmail Popper (until the author started charging for it).  So you can
still use whatever local e-mail client you want by using Hotmail Popper
and don't have to bother with the webmail-for-dummies interface (except
to signup for a new account or to change options).

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DGuess - 29 Sep 2004 03:50 GMT
Oh, you think thats it.

Hmm, know what it costs to buy a server these days? How about the backup
server as well since there is going to have to one. I bet it's more than
what you paid for your Hotmail account during al the time you've used it.

Now, consider they have to pay someone to run it.  Well, one person can't do
it 24//7/365 so they have to hire more. I bet it costs more for those people
than you've paid for your Hotmail account during the time you've used it.

Other costs. Gee, what do they run on, ah yes, electricity. My monthly
electric bill runs from $120 on up depending if I've used the AC or the heat
in winter. I bet it's more than what you paid for your Hotmail account
during al the time you've used it.

Taxes. Gotta pay the piper. I bet it's more than what you paid for your
Hotmail account during al the time you've used it.

Ok, so they gain some revenue back by having some advertisers on it. But
you're using Outlook Express so you don't see the advertisements. No revenue
generated there.

Uisng the cop out that it's making Bill Gates money is showing your
intelligence. It costs money to make money and while the books look great,
the actual cash value isn't quite the same.You know absolutely nothing about
business. but oh that old cop out is easy to use and throw out to make you
think you're saying something but it's only you thinking that because the
rest of us see what a moron you are.

Me thinks one Little Green Amphibious Monster kept his head stuck in the
sand too long and a flea ate it.

Once again Billy Boy is not rich enough. I for one will not use my Hotmail
accounts and will close them.  I have had one since 1995. If that is the way
M$$$$$$$$Soft wants to play, then they will find Hotmail an empty business.
If you do not want to pay for what you received for free the go to someplace
else like www.myway.com.   I am sure they are not going to start charging
and they don't have the pop-ups & ads running all over their pages. What
next M$soft, charging for the use of your search engine .... lets see that
will run you about $20 a year also or may be just a buck a search.  The
hackers are not going to close the internet .... the money hungry business's
like M$soft will. Hotmail was not that great anyway. Hell Microsoft isn't
any better. Next thing you know Billy Boy will be the King of the world
because he bought it all.  Wise up Microsoft, there are other companies out
there and you can't continue to buy the world.  Someday you will come
crashing down hard, one to many legal battles, will suck the deep pockets
dry. I for one am waiting for that day.
Signature

************
"old" devildog
Simper Fi
************

Vanguardx - 29 Sep 2004 05:14 GMT
You never win arguments with children.  They don't have the intelligence
nor experience.
PA Bear - 29 Sep 2004 10:18 GMT
> You never win arguments with children.  They don't have the intelligence
> nor experience.

Your invalid syntax aside...

An old farmer in Kansas had owned a large farm for several years. He had a
large pond in the back, fixed up nice; picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and
some apple and peach trees. The pond was properly shaped and fixed up for
swimming when it was built.

One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn't been
there for a while, and look it over. He grabbed a five gallon bucket to
bring back some fruit. As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and
laughing with glee.

As he came closer he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his
pond. He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep
end of the pond. One of the women shouted to him, "We're not coming out
until you leave!"

The old man frowned. "I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim
nekkid or make you get out of the pond nekkid," he said, holding up the
bucket, "I'm here to feed the alligator."

Old age and cunning will triumph over youth and enthusiasm every time!
Signature

~PA Bear

FSAA - 28 Sep 2004 15:45 GMT
I have been using OE to connect to Hotmail for years. I think this is just a
poor excuse to charge people for the service. Although I understand Yahoo
does it as well, but at least it didn't take them 4 months to roll out the
100MB service. (I have been waiting for bigger hotmail inbox since they
announced it in June, still nothing yet.)

There are two main disadvantages to main normal users:

1. Downloading of messages to local computer and clear out Hotmail inbox: I
for one download messages from time to time to Outlook express to offload
them from the tiny 2MB limit of Hotmail. I don't they will up the storage
soon, But I still wish to have a local copy I can read at any time without
net connection.

2. Have to deal with web pop-ups and slow Hotmail web interface: If I am
forced to use a web interface  I think I'll rather go with Yahoo. It's much
faster and Hotmail just takes to long to load up and navigate in comparison.
Also managing the account via the web is not as efficient as via OE.

Also I am sure spammers have their own SMTP server, they don't really need
Hotmail, it's just another excuse to get money from normal users

FSAA

> Microsoft has announced they will start charging extra to allow users to use
> Outlook and Outlook Express with Hotmail Accounts.  Please, Don't Do it!  I
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> To curb spam, users will be charged for accessing their e-mail via Outlook.

<snip>
keeps99 - 28 Sep 2004 17:01 GMT
Very well put, and nicely added.  2 points you made are great - (1) That
Spammers don't need Hotmail, they have their own SMTP Servers.  True.  (2)
The Hotmail Web Interface just crawls...  trying to be my one and only news
and entertainment portal - it is just too big to be useful.  Yahoo does load
much, much quicker.  If they're going to take it away, they better make
hotmail.com easier and faster.

And it's not about the $20, or Microsoft becoming king of the world.  
Personally, I like Microsoft, and how well they transform these 6 pounds of
silicone and copper into something useful, for such a small sum of money.  I
think about all I get for $400 from Dell, hardware and software, and feel
guilty that I should pay more.

Before you announced this to us, you should have made good on your 250MB
promise...  maybe we wouldn't have been so up in arms.  Yahoo gave us 100MB
over 6 months ago.  You countered with a speedy Media Announcement...  

Maybe I wouldn't be so upset if it takes as long to take away WebDEV as it
has to increase space.


> I have been using OE to connect to Hotmail for years. I think this is just a
> poor excuse to charge people for the service. Although I understand Yahoo
[quoted text clipped - 41 lines]
> >
> <snip>
PA Bear - 28 Sep 2004 18:09 GMT
<snip>
> Before you announced this to us, you should have made good on your 250MB
> promise...  maybe we wouldn't have been so up in arms.  Yahoo gave us
> 100MB
> over 6 months ago.  You countered with a speedy Media Announcement...

Apples vs. Oranges.  See my previous reply.
Signature

~PA Bear

PA Bear - 28 Sep 2004 18:08 GMT
Inline.

> I have been using OE to connect to Hotmail for years. I think this is just
> a
> poor excuse to charge people for the service. Although I understand Yahoo
> does it as well, but at least it didn't take them 4 months to roll out the
> 100MB service. (I have been waiting for bigger hotmail inbox since they
> announced it in June, still nothing yet.)

You're comparing apples and oranges.  Yahoo is POP3 mail: You don't download
the entire >100 MB into OE, just your Inbox messages.

Hotmail is HTTP mail and only "mirrors" what's on the server: All folders
are downloaded into OE.

250MB (let alone 2GB!) of Hotmail data in OE might prove troublesome so I
suspect MSN may just be being cautious when it comes to the full rollout of
additional storage.  This recent development is surely related.

> There are two main disadvantages to main normal users:
>
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> soon, But I still wish to have a local copy I can read at any time without
> net connection.

Messages are not removed from the Hotmail server once downloaded into OE
(see above).  To delete them from the server, you must delete them from your
OE Hotmail inbox or move them to a Local folder for archiving.

Once you have synched your Hotmail account with OE, all fully-downloaded
messages are available in OE offline.

> 2. Have to deal with web pop-ups and slow Hotmail web interface: If I am
> forced to use a web interface  I think I'll rather go with Yahoo. It's
> much
> faster and Hotmail just takes to long to load up and navigate in
> comparison.
> Also managing the account via the web is not as efficient as via OE.

Neither www.hotmail.com nor www.msn.com produce any pop-ups here (even
before SP2) and I find Hotmail and Yahoo online pages load and react with
equal speed.  YMMV.

> Also I am sure spammers have their own SMTP server, they don't really need
> Hotmail, it's just another excuse to get money from normal users.

Hotmail is HTTP mail and so doesn't use SMTP servers anyway.  "Hiding"
behind Hotmail's HTTP server using a "spoofed" Hotmail address is one of the
ways spam-generators operate.

MSN Hotmail is a business.  Are they not allowed to charge for services
rendered, prices being market-driven (Yahoo's Mail Plus, which allows access
in OE/OL, is also $19.99/year).
Signature

~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE)

keeps99 - 29 Sep 2004 16:25 GMT
Something else I just thought of that disturbs me...  My wife, my 3 kids, and
I all have Hotmail accountns, and like to pull our mail off... and my kids
are only 8, 6 and 4...  That'll be $100/yr charge for our family's Hotmail.  
Ouch.

Ouch, Microsoft.  Ouch.

> Microsoft has announced they will start charging extra to allow users to use
> Outlook and Outlook Express with Hotmail Accounts.  Please, Don't Do it!  I
[quoted text clipped - 56 lines]
> account that doesn't expire, for $19.95 per year, or to MSN Premium for
> $99.95 a year.
Sunny - 29 Sep 2004 23:26 GMT
> Something else I just thought of that disturbs me...  My wife, my 3 kids,
> and
> I all have Hotmail accountns, and like to pull our mail off... and my kids
> are only 8, 6 and 4...  That'll be $100/yr charge for our family's
> Hotmail.
> Ouch.
<snip>
I have never understood why anyone has a Hotmail account, and then downloads
the mail with Outlook Express.
Most people I talk to, use Web based mail to prevent spam being downloaded
into their PC.
Vanguardx - 30 Sep 2004 09:08 GMT
> I have never understood why anyone has a Hotmail account, and then
> downloads the mail with Outlook Express.
> Most people I talk to, use Web based mail to prevent spam being
> downloaded into their PC.

Wrong.  The point of spyware and malware is get it downloaded and
effected on your computer.  The point of spam is to have to SEE it.
Doesn't matter whether the message is a local copy or the view of it
still on the server.  You still see it.  I've never heard of anyone
using any webmail account to avoid spam.  Reasons are

- Dummies that don't want to use the more potent but also more
complicated e-mail program (i.e., the KISS principle).
- Port 110 (POP3) and 25 (SMTP) are blocked at work and you want to keep
your work and personal e-mails separate of each other, so you use port
80 (HTTP) to view your personal e-mails.
- You need to use someone else's computer, like at your friend's house,
at the library, at school, or while travelling.  Rarely are you allowed
to install your preferred software on someone else's computer, and the
use of that covert install would only be temporary, anyway.
- Few ISPs let you define server-side rules.  That means you have to
download the messages (sometimes just the headers are sufficient unless
you need to scan the body) and waste the time and disk space to retrieve
them before your client-side rules can get exercised on them.  Products
like e-mail monitors (ePrompter, Magic, whatever) and client-side
anti-spam products, like SpamPal or MailWasher, have to get the message
[headers] before they can do anything about them.  There is no cleanup
in your mailbox until you connect.  With server-side rules, even basic
ones, you can have the server do the cleanup for you.  You don't waste
the time and bandwidth to get the message and you reduce the consumption
of the disk quota.  If you look in my signature, I require a passcode
string in the Subject and that is easiest to accomplish with a
server-side rule.  If my ISP provided me with server-side rules then I
wouldn't need to use a webmail provider that does.
- People like to keep a constant e-mail address so their senders know
how to reach them.  However, people often change ISPs.  When I had
dial-up service, I changed ISPs about every 6 months, or whenever my
contract expired, if I had found a better provider.  That means my
e-mail address would change each time.  By using a webmail account, it
remains constant regardless of who is my current ISP.  There are
redirection or forwarding services to do the same thing.

But webmail for not seeing spam?  How does looking at the contents of an
e-mail via HTTP with a browser differ from viewing it within a local
e-mail client?  How does looking at a list of messages in a webmail
Inbox differ from seeing that same list in the Inbox of a local e-mail
client?  If you are stupid enough to read spam in your local e-mail
client then using a browser isn't going to empower you with sudden
intelligence (and which is only availale within that context).  Sounds
like you think the browser is a "helmet of knowledge" that overcomes the
stupidity of the user that would otherwise read spam.  (Suddenly I'm
imagining Sunny is a Trekkie yelling, "Brain and brain.  What is
brain?"; see
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/GuidePageServlet/showid-633/epid-24939;
amazing the useless trivia that sticks in your brain, and Google is
great for this kind of trash).

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