The thing is, either you will use it or not. I happen to be a cheap bastard and use free stuff like Open Office. I have no idea how useful Outlook is because I have never used it. Some say it is like Envolution, but well.
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The thing is, either you will use it or not. I happen to be a cheap bastard and use free stuff like Open Office. I have no idea how useful Outlook is because I have never used it. Some say it is like Envolution, but well.
Maybe I am reading this wrong? I thought Microsoft owned Hotmail............so they are not selling anything to anyone, except Joe Public?
As I recall, MS took away Hotmail support for OE and Outlook from free Hotmail accounts, but retained it for subscription accounts. An obvious ploy to force people to either look at their adverts via the Hotmail client, or pay for the service.Quote:
he service will cost US$59.95 a year but is being offered through April 19 for $44.95. For that price, consumers get the downloadable Outlook 2003 for Subscription Services, 2 GB of Hotmail or MSN Mail storage and the ability to manage multiple e-mail accounts and view schedules, contacts and to-do lists.
I notice that they are now offering 2Gb of storage ;)
In the old days AFAIK, Outlook was not sold as a separate module, unlike Word, Access, Excel and Powerpoint, so they seem to be trying to make up for it?
And I am sure that "access" means "access to" not "Acccess the database", they are pretty unrelated products (Outlook & Access) are they not?
just my thoughts :)
I've been on hotmail since way before MS bought it. You could access your account via SMTP for free. And even a year or so after MS took over you could still use ANY mail client that supported SMTP. Now they want to offer a connection with a full version of Outlook. If people want to pay it, that's cool. It is true, you don't need a fancy account somewhere to use Outlook as a PIM, it's all stored on the local PC or Exchange store. And this is not a full fledge Exchange hosting option but it's close. I have to side on HT with this.
On the surface this is an excellent product for small businesses who want group email solutions without buying one. There is no way you could get that same functionality for free. Well if you are a techie you can get close, sure but if you have a small office with NO Information Technology then this is definitely a good deal compared to paying the same for some Linux based technical solutions or hosting company. As for me, I wouldn’t pay it, but hey I have the budget for Exchange and on a personal level I want free, on my own websites. So I deal with less functional products like horde. There are other companies that offer the same functionality as hotmail will, and for less money. But a lot of people already have a hotmail account, so that could be attractive
In addition to cost benefit, one might look at security as an argument. But most businesses I have seen use free or less expensive products and run email from obscure companies anyway. They are usually slow to respond to help desk issues, which I would gauge at also as being slow to respond to any security related issues. So I wouldn’t consider them to be any more secure. And most free email systems are based on PHP. We've had the PHP security discussion a few times. ;)
//EDIT Nihil, if you have ever used Outlook with Exchange, that is what they are selling. Group based storage, in that you can share: calendars, mail, notes, to-do lists, and contacts. Then associate all of those with each other based on several factors along with documents. All this using your browser. Others offer similar functions but you will pay for those as well and they are not anywhere near as funtional. It is alot more than access to your mail account.