MS to sell Outlook access to Hotmail
While I agree this is a good idea for a service, I think the price is a bit high. $60 a year to get email, contact, and calendar functionality via Outlook to your Hotmail account? I think it is a service that some folks would like, but I think the price point is wrong.
Not to mention the security issues. And the licensing. I mean, how many people are really going to go buy the full blown version of Office/Outlook, just to pay $50 a year, so they can have functionality that is freely available elsewhere? I know I don't own Outlook myself...it's always been provided by an employer...at least the most current version. Will this work with Outlook Express *shudder*
No, I think while this is a good idea, they aren't going to be nearly as successful with it at $59 a year...unless they sell it with a huge helping of FUD.
Link
Good deal if you think about it...
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.