My Board

Up until earlier this week, users were able to download their Hotmail to Outlook and Outlook Express. In order to continue doing this, you now have to have a subscription. How much longer before we have to pay for Hotmail itself? /Debate.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(debate)\' />

lol, that should have gone under gmail invites thread somewhere here on the forum lol

since MSN went to subscription chat, everything else has become subscription... I would say at least in 2 more years or less hotmail will be a subscription service :\

I thought it didnt effect anyone who allready was using it, but people who tried to now wouldnt work?

That's just stupid. /knife.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(knife)\' />

Dunno if this was posted in news, this was from 28 Sep;
[quote name=\'itvibe.com\'][size=1]Microsoft have announced that their popular webmail service Hotmail will no longer feature free Outlook integration, following the conclusion that the free service was being abused by spammers.

Millions of users who had previously been able to access their Hotmail accounts from within either Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express will now have to pay an annual fee to have this functionality available to them.

Although Microsoft are painting this as a positive move in the war against spam, it does seem to be a tad convenient that the only way they can get around the spammers problem is to charge legitimate users for this service. Microsoft are allowing users until April 2005 to sign up to one of their pay for services such as Hotmail Plus or MSN Premium, both of which allow POP3 access.

With more and more companies offering more for less in the ongoing battle for webmail supremacy (Gmail anyone?), this does seem like a backwards step for Microsoft to be taking. With Hotmail becoming a truly web only service in it\'s free guise, the last reason to stay with the service may disappear for many users. But then, supporting free users may no longer be in Microsoft\'s overall strategy for the service. We\'ll have to wait and see on that one.[/quote][/size]