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Saying "Today" and linking to a page that says "In a few weeks..." is interesting on Microsoft's part.

It looks too soon to wait with 'bated breath--too many purple faces around if we do.

Yes, I've been waiting for my home.live.com page to dazzle me today but nothing has changed as of yet. Then again, it took me a long time to get the hotmail update.

When is this happening today?

It's the same WindowsLive.com page that's been up for like the last month - a pic of a girl sitting on her back with a big "coming soon" link.

(I can't make this stuff up)  ;)

I hope profile, groups and skydrive get released today.

I hope profile, groups and skydrive get released today.

While Windows Live has potential, the majority of users are most likely Microsoft zealots. The general public is still in the dark about Live and it's branding.

The new Hotmail, while an improvement in speed (substantially), is still aging compared to the Gmail beta. The biggest interest is here is the reading pane from Outlook. While moving the banner ad from the top to the side in the most updated release is a welcome change, making the ads less intrusive (like gmails), is a direction they should have went. Freeing up pop access, which was once free to begin with, isn't a "feature" either.

The big winners here are Skydrive (google is trailing there) and Live People. But what is the point if nobody knows about them?

I remember the days when every other email I received had the @hotmail.com at the end. Now all I see is @gmail or isp specific.

I hope Windows Live improves, and I want it to improve and saturate the market...I really want to use it. Here is to hoping!

When new Live services roll out it takes quite a while for the system to migrate through all the data centers and servers. Realistically, I'd expect to see the migration drift across the world during the day.

FYI: LiveSide http://www.liveside.net is expecting the rollout to start at 4PM Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8)

"While Windows Live has potential, the majority of users are most likely Microsoft zealots."

Hotmail has well over a quarter of a BILLION users.

That's a lot of zealots.

I use the "Software" side of Windows Live more than I use the "Service" side but I want to see how Live Photos and Live Home stack up to other similar sites.

I also use SkyDrive.

"Hotmail has well over a quarter of a BILLION users."

Spammers you mean. And why is it that in the old days, we received email from people with "@hotmail" and now it's a rare occasion?

Hotmail was one of the best, most advertised free email options available.....10 years ago or more. Times have changed, and the younger generation seems to be moving on to things like gmail, myspace, facebook. It's rare that I am linked to a Live Spaces, or MSN/Live Photo site.

When are they going to release the software part of the windows live wave 3?

bkvalheim

The numbers really don't match your experience. Hotmail is BY FAR more popular than GMail. Although Yahoo! mail is still bigger than either of them last I'd checked. And yet, I don't get much mail with an @yahoo.com address.

Personal experience really doesn't reflect actual usage share in my experience. People tend to have friends that use similar services and move in clusters.

Well believe me, I never once claimed gmail was bigger that Hotmail. IMO, I am sure that hotmail completely dwarfs gmail by leaps and bounds by number of accounts.

The question is, which accounts are being used daily, and which accounts are still lingering (checking their old email occasionally), while they moved on to others. How many are throw away accounts? How many are one time accounts to sign up for a free offer?

But of that 250 million number, my guess is that the number of truly active accounts (based on percentage) could be dwarfed by gmail down the road in the not to far future.

There is no question that hotmail rocks as far as number of accounts.

That said, I have begged my wife to leave hotmail, and she refuses. She said she is just used to it, and doesn't want to learn a new email client. It just "works", and that is what she wants.

bkvalheim

Actually, Hotmail also dwarfs GMail in network traffic. It's certainly used.

GMail gets a lot of press but not a lot of usage.

Hotmail gets little press but a lot of usage.

True, I guess spam does take up quite a bit of traffic. :)

Well considering that the 2 biggest ISP's in Canada are Bell and Rogers, both Hotmail and Yahoo!Mail get a good workout.  Bell is partnered with MSN, so their email system backend is powered by the same system that runs Hotmail.  Rogers is partnered with Yahoo!, and the same is true there.  Both services give out branded email addresses as @sympatico.ca or @rogers.com even though you can log on to their respective partner sites, Hotmail, and Yahoo!Mail.  Even though people aren't necessarily using the original hotmail.com or yahoo.ca domains, the systems are still being used on a daily basis by the vast majority of users.

AFAIK, no ISP in Canada is partnered with Google for value-added services.

How many US ISP's are partnered with any of those companies?

"Spammers you mean. And why is it that in the old days, we received email from people with "@hotmail" and now it's a rare occasion?"

Actually most spammers use bots and other programs to pretend they are someone else. For example I could use my email server and tweak it so that it looks like my email comes from ebay or microsoft or anyone. The only way to really know is to look at the headers of the email.

DarkSages

Actually, the way internet email works, you could also route your mail through another server and change your header to make even reading the header pretty useless.

(The way mail works on the internet is really ugly - legacy of the old Unix based design from long, long ago)

It remains true that much of the spam "from" @hotmail.com addresses never touched the hotmail servers on its way to the victims.  (It's not quite as true as before, as Microsoft periodically loses control of the signup process, although I haven't seen much of that recently, either (it's happening more on Yahoo, recently, particularly yahoo.co.hk).  (I've been watching details of incoming Spam since 1994.)

Much the same is true of @msn.com addresses (since they moved to the hotmail servers--they were pretty clean before that but as with hotmail got a bad rap due to forgeries).

I don't have a hotmail account--(leftover bad feelings)--I do have a live.com account (also hotmail servers of course).

(I was amused by one response from Hotmail abuse, who assured me that the @hotmail.com spam I reported with full headers, which clearly arrived from a hotmail server, was our problem not theirs.)

Anyhow, looking forward to the rollout.

DarkSages and Mike, the Received: header one can trust is the first one written by the receiving server in one's own shop, where that is verified to match the log entry for the message's arrival.  

That's what I mean when I say a message came from a hotmail server.  It helps to be able to access those logs, as I can.

We see attempts to forge our Received: headers, but since they forge sendmail headers and we don't use sendmail, those are easy to spot even without checking logs.

"Hotmail was one of the best, most advertised free email options available.....10 years ago or more. Times have changed, and the younger generation seems to be moving on to things like gmail, myspace, facebook. It's rare that I am linked to a Live Spaces, or MSN/Live Photo site."

Prior to 1997, Hotmail wasn't owned by Microsoft.

"Old Unix based design from long ago".  True, but...that's in contrast to the Microsoft campus mail system of the mid and slightly-later 1990s, I suppose.

I got a message from a program manager announcing that a new version of a beta thing was about to be shipped.  Sent by him before the shipment (confirmed verbally).  Message arrived 25 hours after the shipment did, with headers proclaiming its strange journey around the campus.  (Our mail system was working throuhout, and receiving trickles of other mail from the campus.)

(Exchange works.  Now.  Pretty well as viewed from outside an entity (I've never viewed it from inside).  As of 2003 (or 2000 with 3rd party patches).  Before that, it was a colatteral spammer.)

"Prior to 1997, Hotmail wasn't owned by Microsoft."

I never said it was.

@mikegalos: "Hotmail has well over a quarter of a BILLION users.

That's a lot of zealots."

That's a lot of people that don't know any better. AOL has a lot of users too. And look at the reputation AOL users have.

"The numbers really don't match your experience. Hotmail is BY FAR more popular than GMail."

Popularity means nothing. Look at Windows. The most popular but clearly not the best operating system. People have been conned in to using it now and are paying a high Microsoft tax.

"Popularity means nothing."

Exactly. Look at Britney Spears. She can't sing, yet she is popular. It's not our fault people have bad taste :)

"People have been conned in to using it now and are paying a high Microsoft tax."

Last time I checked, Hotmail was free.

Has that changed?

By contrast, people using Google pay a high Google tax:  the exclusive right by Google to use any and all content posted by the user to use as ads to promote Google's services, and to sell to other advertisers and Google partners that pay for it (ie. malware site owners that advertise on Google).

Microsoft doesn't "charge" that "tax".

"True, I guess spam does take up quite a bit of traffic. :)"

It maybe true that a lot of spammers use hotmail. It's also true (in my case) that my gmail account receives a lot more spam. For me, the choice between the two is simple... and easy - I prefer hotmail.

"People have been conned in to using it now and are paying a high Microsoft tax."

True. But they are tight not offering free POP3. It's 2008 peoples.

Google sux porcupine nuts.

Live Mesh folders can be accessed through the hospital firewall with just the browser, and it's free! totally rad! Get it, rad?

To see why Google rocks, do a search for "#mumbai" on live and Google. The twitter page is among the top 5 links on Google and nowhere to be found on live search. It seems like Google's results are updated a lot more frequently.

robertsjoe said:

@mikegalos: "Hotmail has well over a quarter of a BILLION users.

That's a lot of zealots."

That's a lot of people that don't know any better. AOL has a lot of users too. And look at the reputation AOL users have.

"The numbers really don't match your experience. Hotmail is BY FAR more popular than GMail."

Popularity means nothing. Look at Windows. The most popular but clearly not the best operating system. People have been conned in to using it now and are paying a high Microsoft tax.

______________________________________

Hey Robert: give it a rest will you?  Please take your Apple trolling crap somewhere else!!!!!!!!!

Christ! Just give it a rest. We get it, you like Apple. OK! But enough!

Is POP3 hotmail access offered in today's rollout?

@screechi0784: I think I read/heard something about the WL Software being released early in 2009.

I just gave some of the Wave 3 WL Services a try. The Favorites in SkyDrive is bad. A barebones page but until WL Favorites, each link opens in a new tab.

I thought photos in SkyDrive would also appear in WLPhotos but I don't see them. I do like the Slideshow feature in SkyDrive (though it's very simple).

@delmont: "Hey Robert: give it a rest will you?  Please take your Apple trolling crap somewhere else!!!!!!!!!"

When will this blog stop trolling with anti-Apple stuff? Why not ask that Paul stop being an Apple basher?

Robertsjoe,

No. ( shaking my head in disgust at you )

Where to begin...hmm...it's a free country, it's Paul's blog...how about those two things for starters?

How do you feel it is your duty in life to right what you believe is being said that is wrong about Apple?

Get a life dude! Pack up and move out of your parent's basement.  Try enrolling in college if you're old enough.

home.live.com is very, very cool. Kind of like a full social networking site but with no lock-in.

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@ Delmont:

"That's a lot of people that don't know any better. AOL has a lot of users too. And look at the reputation AOL users have."

I thought the old AOL reputation was because of loads of internet newcomers being unaware of usenet etiquette.

Seems like your AOL argument may be out of date.

gorath:

I don't even know what you're talking about.

I do not defend AOL.

I dislike AOL.

The only people I know that use AOL are GM UAW employees that get it for $3/month.

Fourth I was quoting robertsjoe.

Fifth, is this same lame attempt to come to the rescue of one of your Apple troll buddies?

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