Important for Hotmail users

Post by **BobHelm** » August 1, 2012, 8:50 am

With the October coming of Windows 8 there are some important changes to Hotmail as well.
The most important is that Microsoft are dumping it....well, sort of.
Hotmail will disappear & it will be replaced by Outlook.
Microsoft has taken some stick over the years about Hotmail, especially from corporate users, who won't touch it with a barge pole. Outlook is a name that corporate users are happy with & have used for years as part of the Microsoft Office Suite.
Hence the name change as Google GMail has rather swept the corporate board as the webmail of choice.
So the Hotmail 'view' of the world will be replaced with an 'Outlook' one.
Why is this important, well...Outlook 'names' are up for grabs at the moment & you can gain a new email address that ends @outlook.com NOW by going to outlook.com & signing up for it today.

Your old hotmail account is not wasted though.
You can set up your new @outlook account so that all your old @hotmail new messages drop into a new Inbox Folder on your new outlook mail address.
However now is the chance to replace your old fredsmith_998321 hotmail account with a nice new fredsmith outlook account - well, just maybe, if you are quick about it...

This is what it will look like...

Post by **lee** » August 1, 2012, 9:41 am

Looks good Bob. I like the right hand preview window and layout similar to the windows version. I have never really liked using gmail, it's never feet right to me. I feel comfortable using MS Outlook so if this looks and feels the same it will be worth signing up.

Post by **BobHelm** » August 1, 2012, 9:49 am

Well not bad for free. Lee...

I gather that one of its' 'selling points' is that the contact list can combine email, phone & 'social website' friends all in one place. Haven't seen how that looks in practice yet, but could be a very handy file to save to make sure that contacts are not 'lost' in the future.

Post by **semperfiguy** » August 1, 2012, 10:01 am

Bob, I am already logged into my Hotmail account on my laptop, so I took your advice and went to outlook.com just to see what would happen. What appeared was a exact duplicate of my Hotmail account with the new Outlook format. So, it appears there's no need to do anything. The current Hotmail inbox and folders were already there, as was Skydrive.

Post by **fatbob** » August 1, 2012, 10:03 am

From what I have been told and looked up on google hotmail will remain as a service and not disappear, they are only offering a better service with outlook.com, if you are satisfied with hotmail there is no need to do anything.

Post by **bluejets** » August 1, 2012, 10:06 am

Wouldn't happen to know what the fees will be.?
Section 14 of the agreement talks about fees and charges but couldn't see any other reference.

Also wondering what will happen to MSN Messenger, if it will go also or not be affected.

Post by **BobHelm** » August 1, 2012, 10:09 am

If you have an existing Hotmail.com or Live.com address, you can continue to use it with the new Outlook interface. But new addresses in the Outlook.com domain are up for grabs. if you have a common name, I recommend that you get yourself over to Outlook.com now to claim your preferred email address while it’s still available.

The Outlook.com preview will run alongside Hotmail for now, but when the preview ends, this will be the replacement for all Hotmail and Live Mail users.

Not sure about the fees...
There has been a pay for version of Hotmail for a few years now (Hotmail Plus). I think it was $19.95 a year. More space to save & the account never expired. There was also something called MSN Premium for a whopping $99.95 a year, but have no idea what that gave you... Most of the free web mail suppliers have a 'paid' version that gives you some extras as well, although I think the vast majority of users don't subscribe.

Post by **JimboPSM** » August 1, 2012, 11:24 am

Like SF, I went to outlook.com and found it automatically came up with all my existing hotmail stuff in outlook format, I sent a test e-mail from it and found that it used my old @hotmail.com address not an @outlook.com address.

I logged out of Hotmail, went to outlook.com again and was then able to create a new much simpler @outlook.com address which I confirmed with another test e-mail.

It appears that you can import all your old e-mails and your address book – but I’ve not tried that yet, will wait for a few reviews on how successful that may (or may not) be before committing myself

Thanks for the heads up Bob, it's stuff like this that make the UM forum a mine of useful information =D>

Post by **BobHelm** » August 1, 2012, 9:29 pm

Anyone that wants any further details about outlook here are some early walk through documents..

Using the Outlook.com preview (FAQ)
http://www.zdnet.com/using-the-outlook- ... 000001967/

Goodbye, Hotmail. Hello, Outlook.com
http://www.zdnet.com/goodbye-hotmail-he ... 000001893/

A guided tour of the new Outlook.com
http://www.zdnet.com/a-guided-tour-of-t ... 000001901/

Post by **Khun Paul** » August 2, 2012, 7:03 am

Thanks chaps, went to Hotmail followed the on screen advice, booked my Outlook address, and lo and behold everything was moved made a new folder in Outlook to take care of any emails sent to old hotmail address, they store it automatically. even sent emials to all my contacts to advise them and the jobs done, nothing lost nor mislaid for once a simple operation for a simple man.

Post by **BobHelm** » August 3, 2012, 1:02 pm

Like Paul I had no issues losing mail or folders.
Not that I actually think anything has been physically moved, just a pointer set differently.
I have a @hotmail inbox as a folder in my @outlook account & my post seems to be arriving there on a regular basis.
So, so far, so good.

I gather that this is not just a 're-branding' of the old Hotmail name to something new though. Microsoft have, I gather, put some major effort into updating the mail system.
One of the new features (that I haven't experienced yet as I have not converted much to the @outlook address yet) is
Automatic folders
This is what I am told is the concept behind it..

The best new innovation in Outlook.com is what I like to call its “automatic folders” feature. The system attempts to smartly sort some of your mail for you by automatically creating virtual folders for common stuff like email newsletters, Facebook and Twitter alerts, and other repetitive messages that can end up burying more important emails from human beings you actually need to correspond with. Obviously, since this is run by an algorithm, there will certainly be some false positives and negatives and you might have to tweak it, but I like the low-touch nature of this feature. Microsoft has also tried to streamline the process of setting up your standard these are inbox rules as well in Outlook.com.

In his blog post about the new service, Microsoft’s Chris Jones summed up the feature. “Outlook.com automatically sorts your messages from contacts, newsletters, shipping updates, and social updates,” wrote Jones, “and with our Sweep features you can move, delete and set up powerful rules in a few, simple clicks so you can more quickly get to the email you really want.”

Another nice feature is if you hover the mouse button over a post then a number of options automatically appear to let you instantly do something with it. As standard these are things like, delete, flag as important, move to folder etc. You can, apparently modify what items actually appear on this hover list though.

Post by **rickfarang** » August 3, 2012, 3:54 pm

THANKS BOB!

Post by **BobHelm** » August 6, 2012, 8:58 am

Well I have been using outlook for nearly a week now & no problems.
I didn't have any problems with Hotmail either, so maybe that is not much of a recommendation...

I do prefer the style of Outlook though & it is certainly very easy to use.

Only 1 thing has annoyed me a little is that I am still getting junk mail.
Yes, Outlook is identifying them & placing them in a junk folder & it is not very many - 3 so far.
What does annoy me is that they are not addressed to me. The sender is obviously using some sort of script or program to send multiple mails out to ransom addresses, not specifically mine. As Microsoft can obviously identify this why does it not stop it at source?? Or why is there not some way of 'reporting' these users back to Microsoft & them shutting the mailer down?

Post by **udonthani** » August 6, 2012, 4:32 pm

I know Microsoft will change to outlook in the near future, and there are many Outlook's out there. I have for quite a long time used another e-mail system, worth for you guys to take a look at, it is called Em Client and you can get it free of charge at:
Http://www.emclient.com/
it has all the features a good mailprogram should have and you cann ofcourse attach your safety certificat to your mails. Just a suggestion