CNN wrote:SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- Microsoft Corp. plans to give paying customers for its Hotmail e-mail service 2 gigabytes of storage and boost the size limits on free accounts, matching similar moves earlier this month by rival Yahoo Inc., the company said Wednesday.
Microsoft also said that it will roll out free e-mail and anti-virus protection to all the 170 million MSN Hotmail customers worldwide that will both scan and clean incoming and outgoing e-mail for viruses and worms before they can enter a customer's inbox.
The changes will start early in July, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said.
Yahoo earlier this month made good on a promise to boost the storage it provides to users of its e-mail service, raising the stakes in the e-mail war with Web search rival Google Inc. Google has announced plans for its Gmail service that gives users 1 gigabyte of free storage, far more than offered by Yahoo or Microsoft's e-mail services.
"The playing field has changed," said Blake Irving, vice president of communication services and member platform for MSN. "We're going to take storage off the table as an issue."
Microsoft will now boost storage to 250 megabytes for users of its free MSN Hotmail and also increased the size of attachments that can be sent with e-mails, to 10 megabytes from 1 megabyte previously. Users of the free MSN Hotmail before had 2 megabytes of storage capacity.
Microsoft also announced a premium Web service called MSN Hotmail Plus, for $19.95 per year, giving customers 2 gigabytes of online storage and the ability to send 20 megabyte attachments.
All current Hotmail extra storage subscribers worldwide will be upgraded to MSN Hotmail Plus when it launches globally later this summer, Microsoft said. MSN Premium subscribers will also receive those added storage benefits later this year.
Customers of Hotmail Plus also will not see graphical advertisements -- they will be replaced by text advertisements -- and their accounts will never expire, Irving said. Users of the free Hotmail e-mail service must log in at least once every 30 days or their accounts expire.
Brotherhood of the Bear | HAB | Mess | SDnet archivist |
And then you remember what a shitty service hotmail really is.
Seriously, hotmail gives me problems when sending to anyone at all...it takes days easily...whereas with yahoo, it's almost instant. Add to the fact that this will not be active for a long time, Yahoo is arguably the better
Xcom ; Standing proud and getting horrifically murdered by Chryssalids since 1994
Considering it takes me 5 minutes to recieve a Hotmail email sent to MYSELF... and 5 seconds sending a Gmail email to myself...
I'll keep my Hotmail account for signing up for boards and stuff.
Mayabird is my girlfriend
Justice League:BotM:MM:SDnet City Watch:Cybertron's Finest "Well then, science is bullshit. "
-revprez, with yet another brilliant rebuttal.
Ads? I don't see any stinking ads. *pats Mozilla with Adblock extention*
Seriously though, I never use hotmail for anything legitimate. They're good for nothing more than just something as a throwaway account. More and more forums are actually blocking web-based e-mail hosts like hotmail, yahoo, etc because of the problems they cause due to trolls.
"I once asked Rebecca to sing Happy Birthday to me during sex. That was funny, especially since I timed my thrusts to sync up with the words. And yes, it was my birthday." - Darth Wong
Leader of the SD.Net Gargoyle Clan | Spacebattles Firstone | Twitter
Considering it takes me 5 minutes to recieve a Hotmail email sent to MYSELF... and 5 seconds sending a Gmail email to myself...
I'll keep my Hotmail account for signing up for boards and stuff.
Why does yours take so long. Mine is nearly instaneous.
As does mine.
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist
"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin
I believe that hotmail has a special system where its instantaneous when you email from one hotmail user to another hotmail user. Guess it's to encourage you to have all your buddies get hotmail
Praxis wrote:I believe that hotmail has a special system where its instantaneous when you email from one hotmail user to another hotmail user. Guess it's to encourage you to have all your buddies get hotmail
This is assuming that we have any influence at all over what our 'buddies' do.
Typical conversation between me and my friends:
FRIEND: Do you think I should study IP or Environmental law this semester?
ME: Environmental. It's a big growth area and has an open book exam.
FRIEND: Nah. I think I'll do IP.
After all, this is completely straightforward. What could possibly go wrong?
THIS LOOKS LIKE A JOB FOR EMERGENCY PANTS!
I hate Matt Damon and there's not a damn thing you can do about it
Praxis wrote:I believe that hotmail has a special system where its instantaneous when you email from one hotmail user to another hotmail user. Guess it's to encourage you to have all your buddies get hotmail
That makes perfect sense if you consider that you're more or less sending email from one server to another within Hotmail's datacenter.
*pats Mozilla with Adblock extention*
