Come get your daily dose of SPAM
Written: Jun 15 '00 (Updated Aug 26 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: free email, address book, blocking sender feature, accessible anywhere, can use Outlook Express
Cons: SPAM, there are bugs, stationery is annoying!
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| bops_mom's Full Review: Hotmail |
I decided I should write a review on Hotmail today as I just logged in to my account there and had a 32 new messages - all of which were SPAM. I have to tell ya, I've got a few of these "free" e-mail accounts with various of these "free" web e-mail places and Hotmail is the only one I get at which I get all this darn SPAM.
I get tons of porn SPAM at Hotmail, as well as a daily dose of financial stuff - "Are you in Debt?" and of course, that always needed large serving of Multi Level Marketing scams. Simply lovely.
Hotmail does have a sender blocking feature, however it doesn't work with these SPAMers. You can block someone each time they send you SPAM, but next time you know they'll just use a different fake e-mail address so it does nothing. Well, not nothing. I have several hundred people people on my blocked senders, all of them from back when I thought I could help rid myself of SPAM by doing this. I have since stopped because it's just a waste.
So, other than the SPAM which seems to go hand in hand with having a Hotmail account, what else is bad about it? Since I'm on a roll here with the bad stuff. =)
Bugs, bugs, bugs. I'm not talking about Bugs Bunny, either. Hotmail has many bugs, which Microsoft is well aware of. My question is, if they know about these bugs and they are Microsoft, why on earth can't they fix them?!
One day a few months ago, I logged into my account only to find that everything was gone. Okay, I know it's not too bright to keep all the messages I get with my passwords to places there, but I did do it. And there they were -- GONE. Oh my gosh. I was so upset. So off I started to try and get some help from the Hotmail support.
One nice thing about their support is the auto messages with tons of info you can get when you have a problem. It will give you the e-mail address to send your problem to as well and information about that problem. It's also a little sad that there are so many bugs with Hotmail that there's a need for these messages to be available.
I did get my mail back. No worries, it's just a bug in the system which Microsoft is well aware of. Oh goody. Now I feel better.
And yet I keep using Hotmail... why?? Because it's there. It's free and honestly, I like it better than the other free e-mail sites I've tried (some being Yahoo!, iVillage and Mail.com).
The benefits of having a Hotmail account are it's FREE, they offer an address book feature (which is less than perfect, but oh well), you can block senders (this will put any messages from that person right into your trash folder), you can save drafts of messages you will send later on, you can save a copy of a sent message into your "Sent Messages" folder.
Hotmail also offers a signature feature (always nice to have), however I don't like that you have to click the box for each and every e-mail that you wish to have the signature added it. Why can't there be a feature which automatically puts it there (Or is there one and I'm just out of it?)?
Hotmail somewhat recently started allowing it's users to send their messages out on stationery. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. Please, don't use this feature! It's incredibly annoying to others. It's hard to reply to what you say because of this darn stationery. Yes, it's "pretty", but it's not worth it, really, it's not.
One new perk is that you can now check your Hotmail using Outlook Express (and Outlook as well, I believe). This is in beta testing at this time, so again watch out for the bugs galore. But all in all, it's an interesting way to read your Hotmail.
Ready for me to stop yet? <grin> All in all, I do recommend Hotmail, it's very less than perfect, but you will find problems with pretty much any free web e-mail service out there. They've all got their pros and cons and unfortunately for me, Hotmail is still my first choice in free web based e-mail.
NOTE: While Hotmail does have a SPAM filter, when I used it I ended up missing some email from people and places that I actually wanted. Thus, in order to not miss any mail I do want, I don't use the filter.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
bops_mom
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 in Wellness & Beauty |
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Member: Melissa S.
Location: California
Reviews written: 625
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Caught up on SAP's - if you need something added e-mail me.
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