back to article So long, Hotmail: Remaining users migrated to Outlook.com

Hotmail addresses may live on, but the service we once knew as Hotmail is no more, now that Microsoft has transferred all 300 million active Hotmail accounts to its new, modernized Outlook.com webmail offering. "We want to give a huge 'Thank you' to all of you who have supported Hotmail over the years, for some of you, that's …

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  1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Meh

    I didn't think anyone who wanted to be taken seriously ever used hotmail.

    I wonder if that also applies to outlook.com.

    1. Khaptain Silver badge
      Gimp

      As the clairvoyant was about to say : I see the image of Face, and also that of a Book.

    2. Raz

      I have a Hotmail address from before they were bought by MS

      Is there something wrong with that?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yawn

      Whatever happened to @passport.com?

      Whatever happened to @live.com?

      It'll be rebranded again in about 5 years.... Microsoft get itchy feet far too often

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yawn

        That period around 2003-5 was utterly bizarre even by MS web standards, and the point I finally stopped considering Hotmail as disposable, because it was just so fecking uphill to actually sign up that taking a cheese grater to your wedding tackle would arguably be less unpleasant.

        I think at one point you had to have a 'passport' identity to sign up for Hotmail, but needed an email address to sign up to passport, but it couldn't be a Yahoo address because it just wouldn't work and send the confirmation mail. Of course you weren't actually told that, it just didn't arrive - but you could validate it by forcing a password reset on the as yet unvalidated account which WOULD go to the yahoo address and both reset the password and (apparently) validate the account. Or at least it would work afterwards to the limited extent Hotmail could ever have been considered to 'work'. Thereafter, on a semi random basis apparently tied to an obscure interpretation of the Mayan calendar, the passport login would again not accept the yahoo address as the user, while another account would work OK with the email addy of a private domain.

        If that was Microsofts 'nudge' to persuade us to ditch yahoo 'cos it doesn't work', it must have been a very odd and probably hallucinogenically fueled strategy meeting chaired by the head of the office cleaning dept.

        Hotmail was also quite unique in that it seemed to be pre-spammed. All you had to do to get your fix of penis pill offers and marriage proposals from attractive Ukrainians called Alina was sign up and log in, whereupon you'd find a selection of crap that had arrived before the welcome email.

        I don't recall where live.com fitted in, except for my amazement on launch day that the simple search homepage from the worlds most highly valued company would render with elements apparently randomly ordered on a current browser - although perhaps that was another MS 'nudge' to point out my 'error' in using a Mac.

        As for 'outlook.com', why? Its use seems to contain the implicit assumption that Outlook is a desirable brand, rather than the software equivalent of medieval instruments of torture, with a penchant for treating its config file as a doodle/scratch pad for randomly deciding which functions are going to inexplicably error today, complete with opaque, 'red herring' error codes. Maybe they could have bought eudora.com, which doesn't do much these days except remind us of what might have been.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Windows

          Re: Yawn

          Are you a woman?

          I ask because " taking a cheese grater to your wedding tackle would arguably be less unpleasant".

          There is NOWT worse than "itchy scrot" and a cheesegrater provides blissful relief from the condition.

          Only eunichs and women wont ever experience the joy of a good chicken skin purse scratching session.

        2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: Yawn

          Hotmail was also quite unique in that it seemed to be pre-spammed. All you had to do to get your fix of penis pill offers and marriage proposals from attractive Ukrainians called Alina was sign up and log in, whereupon you'd find a selection of crap that had arrived before the welcome email.

          It's possible spammers were polling the Hotmail SMTP servers for new valid user IDs, using the RCPT and/or EXPN commands, and candidate names derived from lists of existing email addresses and heuristics for generating new ones. At one time this was apparently common practice; I remember discussions of it on BUGTRAQ or one of the similar lists. (A simple countermeasure is to put a small delay in processing RCPT and EXPN, so it becomes less feasible to test candidate addresses.)

    4. LinkOfHyrule
      Paris Hilton

      No

      You use hotmail for mandatory registrations to websites, crap web forums and porn purposes!

      Obviously its well suited to porn, its HOTmail after all!

      Hotmail - 8 out of 10 Parises recommend it!

      1. Old Buzzard

        Re: No

        I always liked Hotmail for exactly the reasons you give, however it was also fairly easy to use as a backup to several other email accounts I keep.

        As far as Outlook goes, I have to use it at work and I hate it! I am used to Yahoo, but not all that crazy about that one either, but I do find it quite easy to use. I like and use G-mail for my primary email service, but it too has its drawbacks....especially sharing attachments and such. Do not send any attachment to my Gmail account, I'll probably never get it, or even a hint that an attachment was even sent. I am about ready to give up on email altogether. I hear there is a mail service called Snail Mail. It's not free and it certainly is not all that fast, but it gets there, including attachments. Might have to look into that one.

      2. Mage Silver badge

        Re: No

        Yes, that's when you don't want to be taken seriously.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "I didn't think anyone who wanted to be taken seriously ever used hotmail.

      I wonder if that also applies to outlook.com."

      Your opinions can not obviously be taken seriously.

      I've used hotmail for years and years, before Gmail and its ilk.

      Did that not occur to you? Never mind, you live and you learn.

    6. Triggerfish

      Well I've used it since the beginning. Its survived several changes of company me living here and abroad, and has meant I haven't had to worry about maintaining my own domain name through all that time.

      People I have met during those times can get hold off me, some of them I don't hear from for months or more. Everyone who for me its worth knowing and keeping some form of contact with gets my hotmail address. Everyone else gets the junk ones I create or emails that may eventually expire for some reason or another.

      1. Wize

        "I didn't think anyone who wanted to be taken seriously ever used hotmail.

        I wonder if that also applies to outlook.com."

        It is a very useful tool.

        I started using hotmail when your only three options for an email address was the free ones (like hotmail, rocketmail etc), your ISP's email account or to register your own domain.

        No point having your own domain unless you are using it to host a website too. I have no need of my own website.

        ISP's email addresses are non-transferable. Leave that ISP and lose your email address. Even if you use AOL and leave the family home to your own AOL account, you cannot transfer ownership of your email account over to yourself.

        I'll stick with my old Hotmail account... as long as it stays free.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

    7. Daniel B.
      Boffin

      Outlook

      That makes as much sense as IBM offering free @lotusnotes.com addys.

      Outlook is a bad name to email. Back when MS launched "Live Mail", user backlash was so great, they actually backpedaled and preserved the "Hotmail" brand. It's interesting that this time they did completely ditch it, instead of doing what they did with Live; they just stuck the Live interface to Hotmail and called it "Live Hotmail".

      Been using Hotmail since 1996 for the same reasons other commenters have: it was the first free webmail/email service in the 'net, and I held to the addy because I didn't have to change addys whenever I jumped ISP or jobs. It was still called HoTMaiL back then, and not part of the MicroSoft Monopoly. Though there was a big time between 2002 and 2005 that I mostly switched to other options, as somehow Hotmail was stuck with 2MB o' space, even after Gmail came out.

  2. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. CM
    FAIL

    Gurrr

    Can't we arrange for automatic execution bythe most painful ways possible for anyone who babbles about "amazing journeys"? They weaken the genetic pool and are often a red alert for poison in any layer of an organisation. You know it's true.

    Be sad to see Michael Palin go down but no exceptions allowed.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Gurrr

      Anyone into photography tends to have similarly bloody thoughts for users of "interrogate the medium" and "interpret the space", while "a reinterpretation of..." probably requires the invention of an entirely new class of torture methods to do it justice.

    2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      Wasn't it Alexi Sayle

      who said: "Never trust anyone who talks about 'workshops' unless they work in light engineering". Or was it 'solutions' and chemistry. In any case by that principle Palin is safe.

      On topic: I gave up on Hotmail the moment it demanded my phone number. So long and no thanks for all the spam MS.

    3. Euripides Pants
      Thumb Down

      Re: Gurrr

      Don't forget such perversions as "using the new experience".

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Impressive

    And I thought migrating DMX3s to a new VMAX was a big job...

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Impressive

      If memory serves me correctly, HOTmail was on a BSD unix server infrastructure, so I take it that finally MS have successfully migrated Hotmail to Windows Server...

      1. Mike Pellatt
        FAIL

        Re: Impressive

        That was another migration, done (and proudly announced by M$) some years ago. Some results from the Choccy Factory say this was in 2000. I remember it as later, but then at my age time does travel faster.

        Needless to say, it involved all sorts of glitches and downtime. And about 4 times as much compute power to deliver the same service.

        http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb496985.aspx is interesting reading. El Reg commented on it too http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/21/ms_paper_touts_unix/

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Impressive

        There was at least one botched switch from FreeBSD to Window NT. Prior to the switchover MS made quite a song and dance about it, so it was deeply amusing when the NT setup couldn't take the load and they had to failover back to the FreeBSD setup.

      3. The Indomitable Gall

        Re: Impressive

        @Roland6

        "If memory serves me correctly, HOTmail..."

        Clearly your memory doesn't serve you correctly. The site was called HoTMaiL.....

  5. Alister
    Unhappy

    With the new SMTP Send capability, Outlook.com will deliver emails sent from a different account using that account's SMTP server. The result is that they look like they just came from that account – no more "on behalf of."

    Great, another useful tool for spammers.

    1. RonWheeler

      you mean a regular SMTP server...

      With SMTP it is fundamentally easy to forge the source. Not Microsoft's fault.

      1. Craigness

        Re: you mean a regular SMTP server...

        This doesn't sound like spoofing, more like Outlook.com logs into Gmail.com etc and sends the email from there. So spammers would have 2 services which could detect and stop them, instead of 1.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: you mean a regular SMTP server...

          As the alternative (that Microsoft pretends to be the originator for the spoofed domain) would seriously fuck over anti-spam measures like SPF and DKIM, I'm guessing it's mostly likely going to be they relay the messages through the genuine hosters somehow?

      2. Adam 1

        Re: you mean a regular SMTP server...

        HELO on_behalf_of_hotmail.com

  6. Oldfogey
    Holmes

    Hotmail - for El reg ID's

    It runs slower that Hotmail, because it downloads a lot of junk.

    The right hand pane is a nuisance - full of junk I don't want, leaves less room for message titles, and I can't see any way to turn it off.

    Logout is hidden - should be there up front.

    Not impressed - generally a mess.

    I think I will gradually be moving

    1. Trib

      Re: Hotmail - for El reg ID's

      You can turn off ads with the paid Outlook option.

      Logout is in the same place that GMail has it, in a drop down by clicking on your account name. Not sure where the old Hotmail interface had it, I haven't seen the old Hotmail interface in a while.

      Must be something with your system on the speed, because Outlook.com opens faster than my Gmail account (love how GMail always starts with 'loading'). Not sure how fast compared to old Hotmail.

      1. Graham Marsden

        @Trib Re: Hotmail - for El reg ID's

        Or you can turn off the ads with NoScript and Adblock Plus.

        And if it's something his system, it's something with mine as well (running Firefox) because when I first try going into it and try to click on anything it's "oops, no, not going to do anything yet, still loading lots of crap, wait five seconds and then try again and maybe the whole page will have loaded..."

    2. Maverick
      Happy

      Re: Hotmail - for El reg ID's

      hate the right hand pane?

      Greasemonkey script FTW

    3. Blitterbug
      Happy

      Re: Hotmail - for El reg ID's

      @Mr Fogey... Why aren't you using WLM or Outlook or even (shudder) Chunderbird as your mail client? No-one in this day and age should seriously be using a web browser to access their email! I've had a hotmail account since '97 and only point a web browser at it when checking mail while on-site or otherwise away from my laptop. As a chap said earlier, you get 100% portability across ISPs (forever, one hopes). And no ads if you use a mail client.

      Oh, and as for the humorous digs about spam levels, MS's junk mail filter is pretty damned awesome these days. Unlike gmail, which I *do* use as my throwaway account; it's spam filters are as much use as a chocolate teapot.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsoft were supposed to move hotmail from Unix servers to Windows servers after they bought it. This was supposed to show everybody how windows servers could easily scale.

    I don't think they ever completed the move.

  8. Notorious Biggles
    Go

    'tis good

    I've had my Hotmail address since the 90s, although the oldest email I still have in the inbox is from 2001.

    Some argue that Hotmail addresses can't be taken seriously, and I suppose when the addresses are things like john12398384@hotmail.com or thisisareallycoolemaillol@hotmail.com then yeah, it is just spammy looking.

    But that's because of the address, not the domain. I have firstnamesurname@hotmail.com and I think that comes across as far more professional than the umpteen work email addresses I've had in that time or using a personal domain name which are all tied to a particular project or interest. I also think that personal domains like johnsmith.me.uk are totally lame. A sane Hotmail (or now Outlook) address comes across as neutral.

    The new interface is a bit tidier, and I prefer it to Gmail.

    There's only one single thing that I'd like to see implemented - IMAP.

    1. Roo
      Happy

      Re: 'tis good

      I find that it is very hard to take notoriousbiggles@hotmail.com seriously.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 'tis good

      Same here - firstnamelastname@hotmail. Unfortunately - firstname.lastname@hotmail was taken

    3. Martin 71 Silver badge

      Re: 'tis good

      I agree to a point. What DOES look unprofessional is when a company has a website, with their own domain ... www.somecompany.example, but has emails 'somecompany.example@hotmail.com.

      WHY?

    4. Triggerfish

      Re: 'tis good

      Yeah I have my first initials and surname with no need for a string of numbers in my hotmail account. I quite like it for the same reasons, plus it means I got in first (ish) :)

  9. Barry Rueger

    Has It been a year already?

    I guess that it's time for my once annual trip to hotmail land. Somehow the damned thing never dies, and somehow I invariably end up using it for something once a year. Usually to test another e-mail account.

    Anyhow, I had a relative complain bitterly to me last weekend that all of a sudden they couldn't figure how to send an email since it became outlook.com. They're the kind of average non-geek user that uses hotmail, and they were rightly pissed off.

    (Not that Gmail is remotely intuitive until you've used it daily for a month)

    1. The Indomitable Gall
      FAIL

      Re: Has It been a year already?

      Well I personally didn't have a problem with sending emails. I did find the new print procedure interesting though. Rather than a clickable "print" option, you have to click on "forward" then enter the address of another account you have access to....

    2. Mike 16

      Re: Has It been a year already?

      -- Not that Gmail is remotely intuitive until you've used it daily for a month

      Wait, there was a month during which gmail's interface was reasonably stable?

      I've been on gmail since back when you needed to be invited (fortuitously right about when my previous ISP was going titsup), and all I recall is an endless round of "Now, where did they hide that functionality this week?" and later "WTF can possibly take so long to load". Still miles ahead of any of my other webmail accounts, but...

      I've gone pretty much completely to IMAP today, other than that day when gmail IMAP would not work until one had logged into the the web interface and clicked the "Yeah, I see what you did there" button to "accept" that they had hidden yet more commonly-used actions behind a layer of indirection.

      Based on other comments, IMAP does not (yet?) work for HoTMail. As a former Outlook (and OWA) victim, I feel their pain.

  10. tempemeaty

    It's not likely to be a happy change for home users

    I got a "Live" mail account during my stint doing tech support for a telco so I can familiarize myself with how it worked. The telco partnered with MS to provide customers an email service and the telco didn't have good documentation on the MS email accounts the customers were being given in which we were tasked with supporting. That said after a couple years later I found I used it from time to time. By that point, the way I had it customized was kind of cute with it's customer friendly customizable themes. It had a very pleasing bamboo them going on it, the kind of thing end users look for and like in their user profiles and emails. Then the jarring change came without notice. I logged in about a month ago to suddenly find, without my approval, it was changed to the horribly unimaginative aesthetically dead white and blue utilitarian Outlook interface. Hell, if I wanted that I'd have used and email client like Windowsmail or Outook. This unfriendly and jarring change is not likely going to make friends of home users of the Hotmail or Live mail services.

    1. largefile

      Re: It's not likely to be a happy change for home users

      Just curious how much notice you felt like you needed for the change? It's been announced for a very long time.

  11. Twilight

    I'm sure Outlook.com has cost them a lot of users

    My wife used hotmail for over a decade (maybe going all the way back to '96). MS made some changes earlier in the year that screwed up some of her settings (I think it was around SMTP send so it may have now been fixed) and then the forced change to Outlook.com interface which she thinks is horrendous. The upshot is that there's now one more happy Gmail user.

    I'm sure her story is far from unique - I wonder how many hotmail users bailed? Unfortunately, I doubt we'll ever hear the answer.

    1. wowfood

      Re: I'm sure Outlook.com has cost them a lot of users

      I know it's a fair few. I know I'm finally working on jumping ship. the hotmail email gets far too much spammy shit sent to it. I've got a webhosting account I don't use that much so I'm just going to start up admin@mydomain... no wait too obvious for random shitty "Hey this URL is similar to yours AND for sale, wanna buy it for an inflated price while we squat on it?" maybe "Imbetterthanyou@mydomain.com"... need something better than admin.

      Either way the only reason I haven't made the switch over yet is purely because I have so much history on msn, god knows how many accounts are linked to my hotmail, migrating to a new email host, and transferring over all my (useful) accounts to it will probably take a fair bit of time.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Coat

        Re: I'm sure Outlook.com has cost them a lot of users

        > need something better than admin

        How about bofh@mydomain.com?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm sure Outlook.com has cost them a lot of users

      ".....forced change to Outlook.com interface which she thinks is horrendous. The upshot is that there's now one more happy Gmail user."

      I never understand this!

      What’s so fking different? Left pain navigation centre pain email tree and viewing window, right is advertising bollox. There is very little difference. The functionality hasn't changed any, it does what it does.

      What is the fking problem?

      Just ridiculous.

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