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For years (since 1998) I've used Hotmail, and yep, I've suffered through the many waves of junk mail that marketers use to target Hotmail users. I know MS has done some looking into as far as keeping that crappy spam out of the box, but it seems they can't get the job done.

Throughout the years I've tried different Email clients and not many offer Hotmail HTTP access as a pop service and this has kept me using Outlook or Outlook Express as my main mail client. Problem is with these clients, isn't that they don't work well, but they're full of hackers trying to get into your machine. When using a Linux box, there are no Email clients that pop Hotmail although the Evolution Email is one of the finest PIM clients out there IMO. Talk has it that someone is trying to port it to Windows, that'll be a blessing and a story for another time.

Combined with the fact of all the 'spam' that gets through the filters on the Hotmail inbox and I think it's time to move on and let the 'marketers' have Hotmail. It's not like we all don't have a other options.

So what are the options?

Giving up Hotmail gives you more freedom of choice. Not only can you use more or different Email clients, but now, you don't have to worry if you can POP your Hotmail account. Yahoo disabled POP some years back unless you want to pay for that service, which is another 'sore spot' and another rant story for later...lol

So, on to Gmail. I've been using Gmail for some time now and yes, you can POP access your Email box. I sincerely hope Gmail don't follow the path and make the same mistakes Hotmail and Yahoo made. Gmail offers a WHOPPING 3 gig box. Yep, thats 3 GB not MB! I've also heard Gmail offers a way to use it like an "FTP" account too for transferring larger files. (Hmm...lots of uses come to mind here).

As far as Email clients, I've tried most of the popular models throughout the years and at the moment, I'm using Thunderbird, a free (:D) client with a lot of features and it's available in Linux as well as Windows flavors. The one real problem I've seen with this client is the ability to backup and restore users and mail between different OS'. Thunderbirds ability to import settings and mail from other Email clients is good, but for some reason, they can't import their own backups...lol HUH?? Oh, one more thing, there are extensions for T-Bird that will let you get Hotmail..

Anyway, goodbye Hotmail....and thanks for the years of service.

Man ,

I use quite a few diffrent email's , Depending on what it is needed for. My hotmail is used only for thing's like Messanger , or registering software. Personal matter's go through my Thunderbird Charter account. and team based issues go through Gmail and/or @sosquad.com email account.... I'm out of breath just thinking about checking all those again.

I use Outlook as my main e-mail client, have done since windows 95. It doesn't have the usenet opetion that express has so I use Forte Agent for usenet access, it will do e-mails as weel but have never bothered with it.

Tried Thunderbird...Jury still out on that.

I have a hotmail account as well but it's set to only accept mail from people on my contacts list to keep the dross out.

I set up my father's p.c. for him ("don't see why I can't keep using DOS!") a year ago and showed him how to set up an email account with Hotmail that he could access from around the world during the process. This was the first thing I did for him so I had not visited any sites outside the MSN Hotmail environment.

The whole process took 5 minutes, or less. As I took him into the mail section for the first time (bear in mind this was the only site visited on this brand new, 'virgin' system) we found the usual "Welcome to Hotmail" e-mail, together with another... I shall censor the actual title of it say it was for Viagra (it wasn't, and most animals don't need viagra anyway).

Is this a record for attracting spam?

Yep Shades, big free web emails are free for the same reason radio and television are free (assuming you don't have to pay for cable...lol) and it's because of the business' who are willing to pay to advertise.

There's a spot for free Email and Hotmail or Yahoo are especially important for the new or not-so-savvy web users. They're easy to set up and use, free and accessible from anywhere on the web as easily as going to MSN or Yahoo and clicking the "EMAIL" link.

But, let's face it, since it does attract the masses, it makes sense for marketers to target those as they get more 'bang for the buck' in terms of time spent v money spent targeting an audience. The problem is, Yahoo and Hotmail can't keep out the marketers and they keep your mail box full of crap even with the filters enabled.

But, for the people who's been on the net for some time, there seems to come a need for more email accounts that can be used for different reasons such as Snowy noted. I still have my Hotmail account and use it for registering for sites I 'have to register' to for reading member only documents or downloading files and other accounts for gaming, business, personal and family and instead of going to all those web pages to log in individually, I like using one email client and 'poping' all of them at one time.

Gmail is POP accessible and working well and I can't get over them giving a user a 3gig mail box which I'm sure will used for file storage or sending yourself that big file from the office that can be downloaded later at home.

As far as Email clients, they allow for more control over your accounts via filters and direct downloading to folders you specify. I've been using Thunderbird for about a month now and I have to say I really like it. My Anit-Virus program integrates with it and the filters are working great.

Sry Bushy, missed yr reply somehow. heheh
Yep, I agree with all your points.
'Cept that, I have 5 hotmail accounts.
Only 2.5 of them get spammed (ignore the "0.5"; one of them only gets it occasionally, two get it every day). 2 of them have never had any spam in 4 years (except M$'s own zone spam).
I used ta think it depended on the sites you visited or where you left your e-mail address but the experience with my Dad's 'puter taught me somethin.
(and you shoulda seen what his 1st spam mail was about too. I mean, I really had to censor it. It wasn't 'regular porn' spam. We're talking Gary Glitter here.., Micheal Jackson if you're in the US).

Incidentally, I have 5 further mail addresses with my ISP and a G-Mail account.
I only get spam on 1 of these (1 of my ISP accounts).
The reason is, whenever I am asked to register for anything, I always fill in the same e-mail address which I only set up to receive the resulting spam mail.
I never go into it.
I've recently even set it up to auto-download and delete mail using rules in Outlook Express.
At last, I'm beginning to beat the spammers. I have them to where they're wasting their time instead of mine.

THREE CHEERS FER ME!!!
WOOHOO!!!

I have a hotmail account that i don't use, i know for a fact though that it's full of mail (mostly junk). I don't even use it for registering to websites.

As for email clients, I use Mozilla Suite (Browser, Mail, IRC, Address book and html composer all in one package) and i've never had a problem with it. I used thunderbird for a while untill I realised that it couldn't handle 12 seperate email addresses and i couldn't backup and import it's own settings (yet i copied all the files to the mozilla folder and i didn't need to do any importing, which was strange). As for outlook, I used that for a sum total of about a day before it annoyed me and i got rid of it.

Email accounts .. I have more than 12 and most of them go directly to Mozilla, including my 2 gmail accounts .. something which neither my hotmail or yahoo mail offer so they've fallen by the wayside.

Hope this makes sense cos i've just woken up and haven't had coffee yet

Yep Shades and Harry, I also have more than one Hotmail account and one does seem to get more spam than the other one. Shame it has to be the one I used the most...(which figures by the way..lol).

And I've been using Thunderbird Client for a while, I do like it other than the import and export features. It's does import other clients info fine, but it won't import it's own....odd. I did find a third party software that'll do it, but it only does 1 account at a time and if you're like me, you have a lot of accounts, so you can see how time consuming that'll be.

It's been many years since I've tried the Mozilla SuiteDownload Mozilla Suite and I must say it did work pretty well in the past, I'll take another look into now. I made a link and it's 12 mb to download.

Something to ponder. The Evolution Email client that's from the Gnome Linux project is great and word on the street is they're trying to port or remake a version for Windows. I'll switch not only me, but a lot of others in the process if they get it right...lol

Another good Linux client is Kmail from the KDE Linux Group. Both Evolution and Kmail are full clients and comparable to the full Outlook program Windows has.

Here is a comparison I found for the three of them: Click HERE!

The sad part of this is, I like the features of using a full integrated calendar system and for Windows users, it's Outlook. To date, I haven't found any other software on the market (Free software that is, you know how I am..lol), that offers you this. Now don't get me wrong, I like Outlook too, but I've been burned toooooo many times in the past with Outlook corrupting to the point that saving any information was very time consuming and installing Outlook again to fix the corruption only overwrote the files and you lost your info anyhow.

My solution now is to run two email clients. I set them to 'leave messages on server' and run both clients in a pre-set pattern to ensure a backup of my files. I have to manually go delete the messages on some servers to keep it cleaned out. Is it a pain? Yep, but as we all know in the computer world, backup backup backup is a way of life...