

The new Hotmail gives Gmail a run for its money - SandB0x
http://www.slate.com/id/2254837/

======
CodeMage
So basically the new Hotmail is mostly the same as the old Hotmail, but:

1) It offers you some of the features GMail already has, like the conversation
view.

2) It does _not_ offer you some of the features GMail does, such as labels. By
the way, you can tell that the author doesn't really understand labels,
because he claims that the archiving is the same as deleting.

3) It offers you some dubious features that GMail does not have. Preview, for
example, is something I find utterly useless. If I can't glean what the e-mail
is about from either the subject or the short text preview GMail offers, then
it can generally wait for me to open it. However, I'm aware that this is just
my personal preference. What really flabbergasted me was the "Sweep" feature.
I don't know whether the author described it well, but if he did, then I don't
understand why he thinks it's so great. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I think
it's naive to trust in software's ability to guess what your criteria is for
deleting future messages "like" the ones you marked.

4) It offers some preconfigured filters and views that GMail doesn't. Some of
these things sound really useful, especially filtering by senders from your
contact list.

Here's one of the things the new Hotmail doesn't seem to have, that I consider
GMail's killer feature (apart from the whole awesome labels+filters paradigm):
Labs. I absolutely love multiple inboxes and superstars. Also, the new Google
Apps integration with GMail is a huge plus. Finally, let's not forget that
GMail's spam filter, in my experience, works better than Hotmail's spam filter
ever did. I don't think Hotmail will be giving GMail "a run for its money"
anytime soon.

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r0s
Author omits a major feature of Gmail, the spam filter. At the time of release
this was a killer, if memory serves. Personally, this was a primary motivation
for switching.

A working spam filter was a major reason to recommend Gmail to less proficient
users as well. Less malware, phishing and spam means less hassle for everyone.
My hotmail inbox is SMTP'd to Gmail and filtered there, so I know quite well
how much spam hotmail misses(more than 50% of caught spam for me).

EDIT: Just checked, Gmail recommends disabling additional spam filters to
speed up transfers.

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maukdaddy
There is a huge stigma associated with a .hotmail.com address. No way around
that.

~~~
statenjason
Agreed. My gut instinct on any @hotmail.com mail outside my address book is to
mark as spam.

~~~
wyclif
My gut instinct on any @hotmail.com mail is to mark as spam. Fixed that for
you.

~~~
Naga
Yeah, who needs friends?

~~~
wyclif
Friends don't let friends use Hotmail.

------
fjabre
I read the article and signed up. Here's why Hotmail still sucks:

Tried importing my 1500+ contacts from gmail and hotmail said it can only
accept up to 1500.

Also, even though you can 'add people' to your hotmail/msn network using
Google's oauth and contact APIs I'm ironically forced to import contacts using
an Outlook CSV file. Why the inconsistency there?

WARNING: During the 'add people' wizard I almost accidentally sent out 1000+
MSN live invites to my google contact list. Maybe MSFT confused the words
'viral' and 'virus'..?

Finally, my brand new hotmail account feels utterly sluggish next to my 6 year
old gmail account.

~~~
pjob
I think that you've reviewed the old hotmail.

"Microsoft wants to change that perception. Sometime this summer, it will roll
out a fantastic new upgrade of Hotmail. I've been using a pre-release version
of the service for a couple of weeks now, and I'm a huge fan."

------
WillyF
The author of the article mentions the ads in Hotmail's interface as a big
drawback. I think the fact that every e-mail that you send has an ad tagged on
at the bottom is a much bigger problem. I don't care what e-mail provider you
use, but if every communication that you send comes with an ad attached, you
look like a doofus.

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jacquesm
Hotmail will always be the mark of 'unprofessional' and 'throwaway' email
addresses, they were that since day one and it hasn't changed much. In the
online payment world having a hotmail address is a strike against you during
the processing of your payment.

Gmail users are not going to try hotmail any more than hotmail users are going
to try gmail, unless they were already planning on doing so, migrating your
mail is costly.

What it might do is to stop some users defecting they would have otherwise
lost because of being dissatisfied, but I really don't see how this will woe
any customers at a competitor.

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Jach
No screenshots or video? Sorry, I'm not going to take your word for it that
it's cool and deserves another try. And add me to the chorus praising Gmail's
spam filter.

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justlearning
quote: "the world's largest free e-mail system with more than 360 million
users around the world. (Yahoo has more than 300 million and Gmail a little
less than 200 million, according to comScore"

It would be interesting to get some stats on the actual usage from the 360
million users. I would imagine every other account being created for a single
spam message and disposed never to be used again.

One thing the author didn't experience enough is the lack of spam filter
(which imho is the Gmail's feather in the hat). I opened a live.com account
around a month back. I got a decent account very close to resembling my name
and one I thought could be forwarded to my gmail account. I logged in and I
see the animated flash banner distracting me from even seeing my first email.
It's like I logged in to see this banner ad. I logged out after finding that
hotmail doesn't allow you to forward your email to any other windows live
associated account(hotmail?) or a domain's email(which I didn't try). A week
later, I logged in to try the forwarding to domain options. I wish I had taken
a screenshot, but I had one and half pages of spam. Now this emailid; mind you
- I didn't email anyone; I didn't receive any email from any friends.
Nothing!. All I did was send a test email to my gmail account. So I logged out
for good. I won't be visiting live/hotmail anytime soon.

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37prime
Still no IMAP for Hotmail, that's a deal breaker for many who cares.

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macrael
As the author points out, years of gmail archives create a very high switching
cost for moving to another email provider. Not to mention the fact that
setting up an infinite email forward is an imperfect solution to the problem.
It would be nice (pie in the sky, here) if there were a way to easily transfer
your email account, address and all, between two different providers, sort of
like how you can do so with your phone number.

~~~
thesethings
Gmail lets you use IMAP, which is as nice of an email transfer option as one
could hope for in 2010. (<http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail>) You can
even export your filters. \- The article doesn't mention if the new Hotmail
will support IMAP. The current one makes you have some strange "Windows Live"
client as far as I know.

In this way I don't see it as Gmail imposing the switching cost (one could
move away to lots of other providers or self-hosting).

------
phatboyslim
I had to check because I thought Microsoft still owned Slate, but apparently
they sold it to Washington Post in 2004. Still, it is a bit difficult for me
to swallow an opinion piece from a previously Microsoft owned non-technical
magazine.

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epoweripi
What about ads tagged along with every email? gives me one more reason to not
switch over any time soon away from gmail...

