I still remember many years ago when Hotmail used to be the most prominent e-mail service. People wanted to have an e-mail account from Hotmail, because it was basically the only free e-mailing service at the time. But now, Hotmail has become less and less popular as people frequent to other free e-mailing services such as AOL and Yahoo! Mail.

I first used Hotmail about 5 years ago. To me, Hotmail was the perfect e-mailing service at the time. I was so enthralled by the idea that I could send e-mail for free from this e-mail account. Essentially, Hotmail was revolutionary! It was the only one of its kind many years before.

Even though Hotmail has undergone many changes and has been updated from its previous version, it is falling behind its fellow competitors. Why you might ask? Let us see why.

First of all, Hotmail lacks the storage capacity that other e-mailing services have. Hotmail only has 2MB storing space compared to the 6MB storage space that Yahoo! Mail has. A total of three-fold! This is one of the main reasons Hotmail has fallen behind its competitors. The 2MB storage space is barely enough to hold a couple e-mails with digital photos inside them. I have photos sent to me quite often to my account, and by the time I have a look at them, there is a message stating that my Inbox has reached a critical level.

Another major problem with Hotmail is the gargantuan amount of junk mail I receive. On average, I receive more than 40 messages of junk mail a day (20 that end up in its proper place in the Junk Mail folder and another 20 that somehow ends up in my Inbox). Because I am a Hotmail user, it is extremely irritating when I check my mail on a daily basis and find all this junk in my account! This junk mail ranges from the typical adult porn to special passwords to these sites to messages on balding to travel "discount" messages and to....the list goes on.

Another problem with the Junk Mail feature is that when you choose to filter junk mail messages, some of the messages sent from my friends (especially here from Epinions) ends up in the Junk Mail folder. It has left me in confusion as to why their messages end up in the folder, while all these other hopeless junk messages unusually end up in my Inbox. It seems incredibly strange that messages from my friends would be considered junk mail, while advertisements on balding seem to end up in my inbox. It just seems ridiculous! Sure, other e-mailing services (again, Yahoo! Mail) suffer from the amount of junk mail received, but the problem at Yahoo! Mail is not as diabolically poor as that of Hotmail, since the latter contains only 2MB storage space and 1 month of junk mail could potentially cause problems for your account.

However, Hotmail does have many pros as well. First of all, Hotmail is extremely user-friendly. The site is probably the easiest e-mailing site to use. It is extremely easy to sign-up for any Hotmail account, with the process taking less than 5 minutes. Once you have established your account, you can immediately login and start adjusting your settings to the account. There are clear tabs at the top of the page stating whether you want to go to your Inbox, Address Book, Compose New Mail and other things. Once you click on one of these tabs, there is a clear menu on the left with Inbox, Junk Mail, Sent Mail and Trash featured in this menu. Also, on the front page, there is a percentage bar indicating the amount of storage space that has been consumed by mail. This is most helpful, and allows you to get rid of mail when it reaches its full capacity.

Although the sign-up process is an extremely simple task, choosing a user name is not as easy as one thinks it is. Because so many people have signed up for Hotmail, it is literally impossible to come up with a user name that you genuinely like. Most of the time, another person has taken your nickname or your favorite pet's name or even your real name, so as a result, you are left with coming up with a very difficult user name to remember or you have to come up with an extremely original name (which I somehow managed to do).

Like most other free e-mailing services, Hotmail is accessible anywhere. Whether it is at an Internet cafe, your home, school, friend's house or any other place in the world or whether your computer is still running on Windows 95 or a brand new computer, you can always check your Hotmail account on any computer that has the Internet.

Because Hotmail has merged with Microsoft, one now has the privilege of sending Hotmail messages from Microsoft Outlook Express. You start off with the Microsoft Outlook wizard, which allows you to set sending Hotmail messages from Outlook Express instead of having to sign in to Hotmail.com and doing so. This not only saves time, but Outlook Express allows you to change the font type and size to your liking, which is a feature that other free mailing services do not have. However, this feature is only available for Microsoft Windows users and not Macintosh users, so it is a pro for Windows users and a con for Macintosh users.

Despite all the junk mail problems Hotmail users are faced with and all the flaws of Hotmail, this e-mailing service is generally a very good service. It is easy to use, easy to access and last but not least....IT IS FREE! Surely any e-mailing service that is free should be recommended to any new Internet user or a user who is looking for a new, free e-mailing service. Just remember. Be careful of junk mail.

Thanks for reading this review.

Recommended: Yes