Comments on: Hotmail redesign: Too hot to handle?

Microsoft embarks in a years' long redesign of its Web mail program only to find most of its users like things the way they are.

[wvwalt]

Why any Hotmail Interface at All?

Allow me to offer a suggestion: Simply download Thunderbird and the WebMail extension. Pull your Hotmail email with Thunderbird and avoid the entire Microsoft interface experience! Trust me - you'll be happier!

[Kenny Yeung]

The reason is...

that alloweds u get outlook interface that doesn't required to set up on Thunderbird...

[bobbydi]

Good Idea- Be Direct

The slowness started with the interface that was supposed to be Hotmail loading. Without that, the Hotmail user went directly to his/her mail, considering that the Hotmail cookie was in the user's pc- signing in would be additional with or without the interface.
By the way, I wonder how MSN ever learned that the users preferred the classic way? The little
blue link was a fake- the user had to use the new Hotmail!

[karlengblom]

Too slow

Where to begin?
- It is very slow and memory consuming. Not just doing things inside the page, but also maximizing and minimizing the window itself. It?s a webmail, how hard can it be?
- Cutting and pasting into word 2000 doesn?t work. MS owns both programs, so come on?
- When changing from the old hotmail, the contact list was messed up, it created duplicates of most entries.
And finally an old grief:
I?ll never forget sometime in around 1999 when Hotmail suddenly erased all ?sent? messages that were older than 30 days. My Sent box contained lots of personal messages, it was a kind of diary. I couldn?t believe what kind of an evil company would do that to me just to save a few hundred kilobytes of disc space. It made me sceptical of online applications for life.
Still I keep my account. That?s lock-in for you.

[lamaze]

New Hotmail.

I've been using the application for some time as a beta user and don't have too many negative things to say about the application. It works very much like Outlook and runs fairly well across my T1 on a P4 XP box. I can understand the complaint that maybe it's too complicated for many users (although I would suspect anyone who uses Outlook to be somewhat familiar with the interface). I won't knock Microsoft for this upgrade, I think it was well worth the effort.

[solomonrex]

drag and drop

I think the basis for a lot of this "desktop" level functionality was the drag'n'drop interface. You would think at least MS understands how FEW people know what that is, let alone use it. Your audience is basically Mac users, some techies on the windows platform, and that's it. Drag and Drop was a big deal on the original Mac, and Windows supports it, but few people use it. Mostly because it actually isn't intuitive. The "move to" button makes obvious sense.

Holding your button down on something and moving it just isn't obvious. People see mouse buttons as buttons. And people know intuitively that you click shallow buttons quickly. They don't understand that you hold them down unless you're playing Starcraft. And Windows itself isn't set up to use drag'n'drop in most software. That was my number one adjustment when I borrowed an apple laptop - you drag and drop software to install it. Talk about unintuitive! It took me a long time to figure out what the little picture on the Firefox install file meant. Of course, it was easy as pie once I figured it out and windows should work this easy and clean, but it doesn't. So email shouldn't try to train its users in the mac way. It's an uphill battle not worth fighting, esp. for MS!

[firebirdkeys]

Are You Kidding?

Mac Users and techies? Drag and Drop? Even my parents expect everything to drag and drop. The bottom line is that as people get going they get set in their ways and fear change. You need to embrace the technology! BTW techies are all about keyboard shortcuts and command line, they are still PINE users.

[Dr_Zinj]

Newer & Bigger isn't always better

First of all, nobody gives a damn if the design team got depressed because nobody liked their stuff.
Second, it doesn't seem to me that anyone did an analysis of the previous product to see what things people didn't like, and what things they wanted to see. Nor does it seem that they did an ergonomic review of how the product was actually used.
Which ties into my third point. With human interfaces, you will eventually reach a plateau that you cannot improve on. For an interface that runs on a visual displace controlled by mouse and keyboard, your classic Hotmail interface may be as good as it gets. You'd need to change the entire paradigm to a different method (eye movement, touchscreen, brainwave, etc) before you can start seeing improvements over the current method.

[TotallyMadeUpName]

It is if Microsoft says it is

Isn't it the Microsoft way for *them* to decide what is better for us and then cram it down our throats whether we want it or not? Their software keeps getting more and more bloated, resource hungry and "pretty" when all we really need is something that works efficiently and reliably.

[HEIDIMM]

What a mess...

I have had a hotmail account since it was first launched and all I can say is that it keeps getting worse and not better. But then, why should it? It is much faster to grab your emails with MSOutlook then to try to log on all of the time. Ditto for Gmail.

[CnetUser504]

Why DOES Hotmail keep getting worse?

You got a Hotmail account at the beginning? Before MS bought it up? That's probably why you liked it. It was originally designed by people who actually knew what they were doing! After MS bought it is when and why it started going downhill! I was going to sign up for a Hotmail account too, but MS had just bought it at that time, and when I saw that, I just backed out of the signup process faster than you can say Pooh!

[whatisgoingonnow]

Windows is designed for Drag and Drop

I've always used Drag and Drop on Windows / in MS Office (often in conjunction with the Shift and CTRL keys for multiple item selection) so I disagree that Windows is not designed for this functionality. Every user has their own preferences. Mine just happens to be using short-cut keys and drag and drop. A better Hotmail re-design would have been one that allowed multiple options for handling data.

Right now I'm not willing to move away from downloading Hotmail into Outlook because I prefer my mail on my hard drive where I can easily back it up and archive it just in case MS messes up. My backups and Outlook saved me from the disruption mentioned by another poster when Hotmail stopped retaining Sent messages for longer than 30 days. That is because messages Sent through Outlook via Hotmail simply do not save to the web-based Hotmail Sent folder (and vice versa). They remain safely on the Hard Drive and on my USB Flash Drive.

[thedreaming]

My .02 on hotmail

I used to have a hotmail account back when hotmail wasn't owned by microsoft. I remember receiving about 100 spam emails a day and one day I got sick of it, so I opened a new account and didn't use it for anything. I just let it sit there. Within a week, it was receiving 200 spam emails a day. That's when I gave up on hotmail altogether.

I'm a gmail user now and I've never been happier. I still get spam, but only people I use my email address to sign up for stuff and 99.9% of that spam gets caught and thrown away, so it never hits my inbox. I can use email and not have a super complicated email filter in place.

Why would I want to go back to hotmail, just cause they have a 'classic' look?

[jaspal.m]

hahahahah-----you sound stupid!!!!

I feel you are stupid!!!!hotmail is built more than 10 yrs before we even heard of gmail..
And about the spam,,i never get as much as you are trying to fool people around here.
100s of spam,,without using it...hahahahha

So why dont you also tell us first that in between what did you used...
Well really you sound stupid...
i m out of control
hahahahahhaah
hahahaha

[mahurshi]

What hotmail needs in its "outlook like" interface

I love the drag and drop feature. In addition, they should have

1. Tabs
2. Pop out feature read/reference multiple messgaes/compose multiple messages.

Yahoo has both 1 and 2.

Mahurshi Akilla

[pentium4forever]

Yahoo has ads

Yahoo has banner advertisements, Gmail are just text ads--less intrusive and annoying.

[JesseThe]

Microsoft Just Does not Get it !

I was one of the Live Email beta testers. What a disappointment.

It is not just because it is slow at all. The story in CNET only looked at the speed factor and was therefore a incomplete report.

The new Hotmail beta was poorly designed for usability. It is clear that Microsoft is designing using the GM and FORD methods, that is arrogantly specifying what users will like and what they will use.

I have read interviews of Microsoft project managers indicating that VISTA and OFFICE 2007 had recorded use of more than 5 million users (their data NOT mine).

The problem is that they then go and make the most stupid assumptions on what the users will want and think, as if the 5 million users data tells them the whole story. Very stupid indeed. Vista is not what I want to use. I bought an new computer and was frustrated with the whole experience with Vista (I actually felt cheated and I am a proud computer geek). I am now back to XP. Office 2007 is in my computer for the better graphics, which was long due. The whole ribbon thing makes me click 2 times more than I did when using Office 2003. It is full of dumb assumptions, unlike what is stated on the adverts.

They just do not get it.

[Jim Hubbard]

I agree....

Real-world user testing seems to have been long forgotten at Microsoft.

I tried Microsoft Accounting Professional 2007 and was sorely dissappointed at the lack of such simple features as the ability to email an invoice as a PDF attachment to an email or the ability to create and maintain email templates for sending emails, past due notices, etc. (like you can in Quickbooks).

I did manage to get the attention of the project lead for Microsoft Accounting Pro and he and his team were very attentive and interested in what I had to say. They even downloaded some Camtasia videos I made of my frustrations.

But, the one thing that still stands out in my mind during our emails and conversations is when he told me that they really didn't use the product in any real-world scenarios and had never even thought of emailing an invoice as a PDF.

This means that no end-user testing was actually done using real, everyday sceanrios. And, more shocking than that, this means that nobody on the team bothered to familiarized themselves with thier main competitor's product (Quickbooks).

I went back to Quickbooks because Microsoft Accounting Pro takes at least 3 times as long to simply email an invoice. Maybe they'll fix it. If so, I'll try it again then.

[t8]

Nothing beats Gmail

Gmail is much better, quicker, and simpler.
Hotmail also has big flashy banner ads. Yuk.

Most people I know who had Hotmail accounts have switched to Gmail. Gmail also links to Google Docs and spreadsheets and other great services like Picasa.

Microsoft offers similar services but as applications that you need to pay for. Big boxes containing CDs to install bloated Microsoft applications that cost too much is so yesterday.

[ReVeLaTeD]

There's one thing that keeps me on Gmail

It's intuitive.

If I get an email with a package tracking number, Gmail gives me a link to track the package on the right, doesn't matter if it's USPS, UPS, FedEx, or DHL. Love it.

Emails are grouped into entire conversations, making it very easy to see a string of context without having to search previous emails.

POP is free - how long, who knows. But for now I'm loving it.

Spam blocking seems to be the most effective I've dealt with. It's not flawless, but it works very well. It also filters BEFORE forwarding or accessing through POP which I love.

Address lookup - if an address is in the email, Gmail will provide me a link to get directions.


It's just more intuitive and I appreciate that.

[t8]

Hotmail was good originally but...

Hotmail was great till Microsoft moved it from a Linux platform to Windows. It then fell over and was very slow. So they put the Linux machines back and slowly replaced them all with Windows and it remained stable.

But that explains why it is so slow today. It runs on Windoze.

[jv]

Poppy-cock

User are always afraid of a change.

Truth is that the new user interface is faster, easier to use and more extensible than the old interface.

What MS will do is too create a hotmail version that is built on the new technology but looks and behaves exactly like the old.

I have used the new interface since the first beta and it is much, much better.

Remeber what allof the DOS people complained about when Windows came out.

Remember that the same thing happend when Apple built the Lisa.

If the users ran the computer industry we would still be using punch cards.

[Mergatroid Mania]

The Fast Food of E-Mail addresses

Who cares.

My e-mail software is set to block any e-mail coming from a HotMail address.

99% of the spam I get is from Hotmail addresses, so I no longer accept ANYTHING from Hotmail anymore.

Only loosers use Hotmail

[krazyken44]

Not so...

Most of my junk mail DOES NOT come from hotmail. I think you need to read the user policy. MSN does not allow spamming and acts on it in several ways. I get more junk from other unknown (to me) providers of email.
So hotmail is for losers, hmm, so what do you use?
Just wondering?

[jaspal.m]

I love its inteface!!!

Well if you people have been using gmail or yahoo new mail(which is on beta)and like it more than the new hotmail..i would say you people are one of those who hate microsoft,so you people would just go against it...
But if you ask me,,i really love its interface,the speed is enough for me,,well its 1000s of times better than stupid gmail and yahoo interface is just stupid...
So i am with the new one without any complaints...

[clamwave]

Not bad.....

I am NOT by any means a M$ fan. However I have found Windows live to be "not that bad", worse than Google or Yahoo, but still a contender. The same applies for Hotmail, I actually like the interface and find it easy to use. For the average user 2GB is enough storage. Yes, Gmail has more features, but am I really that lazy that I can't copy and paste an address into Google maps? The one thing I do like about Gmail and Yahoo beta is the integration with messenger services. I like the idea of receiving voice mails in my inbox and being able to listen to them via a flash player. I would recommend Hotmail to the light email user who does not need excessive convience features or
integration with other products. I prefer the interface of Hotmail to both Gmail's and Hotmail's ,and I do not find loading time to be much of an issue (at least for me). Overall it is not that bad of an offering for M$, at least they're trying. With a little more innovation Hotmail 2 could develop into a leading webmail client.

[jfmezei]

Unreliable HOTMAIL

Since I can no longer send emails to hotmail and msn subscribers, I have to telephone them.

They have changed their filters and now drop legitimate emails without warning. Their server accepts the emails from the sender, do not generate non-delivery notifications, and don't even place the emails in the "junk mail" folder.


However, if I reply to a message they have sent to me, then that message goes through. Go figure.


So, to me, hotmail/msn users live in a different universe and they will unkowingly miss out on important emails. (like a funeral announcement where half the distant family didn't receive because they are on microsoft's email franchise).

[Jim Hubbard]

Too bad they didn't listen to VB developers.

Microsoft is losing ground on the desktop primarily due to the fact that they abandoned the largest base of programmers in PC history by tossing Visual Basic 6 and adopting the bastardization known as VB.Net.

Too bad they didn't have the common sense to consult those 6 million users before stabbing them in the back.

[Jim Hubbard]

Read "The Disaster Kown as Visual Basic"

Here's a good read about what can happen when a company does NOT Listen to its user base....

http://www.bitwisemag.com/copy/bytegeist/bytegeist7.html

[amigabill]

Didn't even work for me

For kicks I tried clicking the new hotmail button at work the other day, and the thing didn't even work for me. I was bored waiting for a simulation to run and checked my hotmail. I have a Solaris box with Firefox 2.something, the new hotmail gave me a silver background screen and stopped.

Sorry MS, but no deal. I'll use the classic style, which works well on the same Solaris/Firefox box. I don't care what's wrong or who's fault it is, if I actually cannot use it, what choice do I have but to not use it?

[goshon]

really sux

I have been a paying member of hotmail for years. I am seriously
considering ending that relationship unless they get it together. In
the past week, I have been unable to log in at least 50% of the
time. Probably because I am on a mac, but still.

[rondaleroi]

Give us a REAL Sent box.

One that doesn't delete messages after 30 days.

And make it so that Sent messages go there automatically instead
of having to remember to check the box to save a Sent message.

Yahoo! does both and now has unlimited storage. Come on,
Microsoft. Get with it.