From the Hotmail team: "Really quickly, want to address the IMAP questions that have come up. We haven't implemented imap since based on the user feedback and usage data, there isn't a large enough need when you look at the other protocols we provide. for mobile - we believe activesync is the best story. it gives you mail, calendar, and contacts. there is big adoption of the protocol here with android, iphone, and wi…
Well they had remote access for a while but started charging for it. I stopped using that feature. I think it was only pop3 anyway.
I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…
There's internet, even in Africa! If you completely disconnect in this day and age for 9 months you're probably dead.
Or you could just be burned out and wanting a period without any internet at all to get back on your feet.
I think this was a negative PR move. Did they really think coming on reddit and saying things like this would be beneficial? I don't see any evidence in this that they actually care about peoples feedback.
They just keep getting defensive about their decisions of deleting peoples email, not supporting IMAP etc.
There's internet, even in Africa! If you completely disconnect in this day and age for 9 months you're probably dead.
That's really not the point, though. Microsoft wrote code that will intentionally delete your email. It doesn't matter how unlikely that is or how bizarre the scenario is, that fact means I'll never use the service or recommend it to anyone. What if there's a bug in that code? Why risk writing code that deletes emails left and right? What's the point? The Devs said "we’d love your feedback", and when people say "plea…
It's unlikely that the developers were the ones making that decision, you know. You're shooting the messengers.
I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…
I dunno what Hotmail is based on, but Microsoft Exchange slows down with the increasing number of items in your inbox, not necessarily message size.
I basically agree with you, but I'm guessing that the important thing isn't saving disk space, but freeing up usernames.
> but freeing up usernames. WHAT?! They do that? That's SO dangerous, and perhaps what made me lose a domain name three years ago! I registered a domain in 2001 with my hotmail account, and noticed in 2006 that the registration had changed to another person in Ontaio, Canada. My only guess as to how they did that (after much investigation) was that they must have accessed my hotmail account, which was dormant for pro…
Pretty sure they do. I seem to remember an hacking incident from the last 2 years where access to a Gmail account was gained by requesting a password reset to the defunct Hotmail account. Gmail was so nice as to tell you which account they emailed. Not sure if this is still the case.
From the Hotmail team: "Really quickly, want to address the IMAP questions that have come up. We haven't implemented imap since based on the user feedback and usage data, there isn't a large enough need when you look at the other protocols we provide. for mobile - we believe activesync is the best story. it gives you mail, calendar, and contacts. there is big adoption of the protocol here with android, iphone, and wi…
As a consultant, I ran into a LOT of people who preferred POP3 on their phones and non-main devices. They just wanted to have as little email on their phone as possible (which also gives you decent security if the phone is lost). Combine this with the fact that Outlook is just terrible with IMAP, and I didn't find too many regular users who liked it. Personally, I wouldn't use anything else, of course.
How does the choice of protocol determine if there is as little email on non-mail devices as possible? Also, I've seen people screw up POP3 configuration so the mail moves to the downloading device (because it gets deleted from the server after downloading, as they didn't choose the "leave mail on server" option). If your phone is continuously checking for and downloading mail, that less security in the event your phone is lost, because copies of your email potentially exist in multiple places. With POP3, everything is copied (or moved) and you don't get a choice to only download some messages (after looking at subject lines or sender names) and leave some messages on the server.
I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…
I basically agree with you, but I'm guessing that the important thing isn't saving disk space, but freeing up usernames.
I think it's mostly to deal with all the temporary accounts that start as Spam1234@hotmail.com and then get spammed for years without the user ever going back to them.
I suspect a more reasonable rule is that you have to log in or download email at least once 60 days after creation or the account get's deleted in one year.
I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270". That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could com…
I basically agree with you, but I'm guessing that the important thing isn't saving disk space, but freeing up usernames.
Um, they make inactive usernames available again? It's nice except that many sites have reset-my-password buttons...
I think this was a negative PR move. Did they really think coming on reddit and saying things like this would be beneficial? I don't see any evidence in this that they actually care about peoples feedback. They just keep getting defensive about their decisions of deleting peoples email, not supporting IMAP etc.
There's no such thing as bad press.
I've read the name "Hotmail" more times today than I had in the past 6 months.