Moving from Gmail to Hotmail: the disastrous conclusion

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

PC Pro editor Barry Collins is conducting a two-week experiment, returning to Hotmail after six years of using Gmail, to examine Microsoft’s claims that its webmail system has improved. You can read his previous blog posts on Moving from Gmail to Hotmail here.

Today, I was all set to bring you the verdict on my two-week experiment of swapping Gmail for Hotmail. Last night, however, I spent in the pub with the PC Pro team, giving the latest issue of the magazine a good send off. Which is when the problems started.

The Twitter client on my iPhone started buzzing like a wasp trapped in a lamp shade. I received the following message:

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Hotmail vs Gmail: composing messages

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

PC Pro editor Barry Collins is conducting a two-week experiment, returning to Hotmail after six years of using Gmail, to examine Microsoft’s claims that its webmail system has improved. You can read his previous blog posts on Moving from Gmail to Hotmail here.

Until now, I’ve largely focused on features that help sort out the chaos of your inbox. But what are the respective webmail systems like when it comes to the seemingly straightforward task of writing new messages?

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Moving from Gmail to Hotmail: sorting and importing

Friday, April 13th, 2012

PC Pro editor Barry Collins is conducting a two-week experiment, returning to Hotmail after six years of using Gmail, to examine Microsoft’s claims that its webmail system has improved. You can read his previous blog posts on Moving from Gmail to Hotmail here.

So I’m a few days into my Hotmail revival, and I’m definitely warming to Microsoft’s much-maligned webmail service.

My favourite thing so far? The way it allows you to easily sort messages into different categories without having to laboriously label each email first. Click the Social Updates link at the top of the inbox, for example, and only alerts sent from my Facebook and Twitter accounts appear. Click Newsletters, and only the circulars sent out by various websites are displayed. I’ll repeat: the entire inbox is intelligently and accurately filtered automatically. You don’t have to do anything other than click the tab at the top. (more…)

Moving from Gmail to Hotmail

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Yes, you did read that headline correctly. No, it’s not meant to be the other way around. For the first time in six years, I’m using Hotmail as my primary webmail account. Well, for a fortnight, at least.

Why am I embarking on this experiment?  Well, because Microsoft challenged me to. “When you ask people about Hotmail, most of them seem to think about how it was in 2006,” Microsoft’s product manager, Ian Moulster told me. “Spam was a significant issue [with Hotmail] back in 2006. Today Hotmail has less than 3% spam.”

It’s not the only thing that’s changed about Hotmail. There are plenty of powerful new features in there: the ability to “sweep” messages from specific senders into dedicated folders; the ability to sort messages into predefined categories such as “newsletters” and “social updates”; some really smart looking integration with Microsoft’s Sky Drive.

Hotmail also lets you collect and send messages from other email accounts, including Gmail. “Give it a go for a fortnight, and if you don’t like it, switch it off again,” said Moulster. So that’s what I’m doing. Switching off Gmail for a fortnight and migrating to Hotmail to find out if Microsoft’s webmail service really is better than its reputation suggests.

I’ll provide regular updates on this blog about how I’m getting on.

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