Microsoft reverses decision to end Outlook Express use for Hotmail
Back in mid-April, 2008, while I was downloading email from my Hotmail account, using Outlook Express, I received a message from Microsoft announcing the impending end of Hotmail support for Outlook Express users. This same notice went out to untold numbers of other Hotmail users who use the POP3 email protocol and Outlook Express, to send and receive messages through the Hotmail servers. The gist of the message was that Outlook Express used the soon to be deprecated Web DAV protocol to poll the Hotmail servers for new messages. Hotmail intends to do away with support of this protocol, for technical reasons related to the sizes of the mail boxes now offered to Hotmail users. Changing Outlook Express would require too much of an overhaul, so they came up with a plan to replace that program entirely, with another POP3 capable email client named "Windows Live Mail." The cutoff date for Outlook Express users to still connect to their Hotmail accounts was set at June 30, 2008. After that only Windows Live Mail, or certain other email clients would be able to access Hotmail, via POP3 protocol.
Well, sometimes good things don't have to end, after all. Today, May 22, 2008, I got this email message from Microsoft, in my Hotmail account:
The Windows Live Hotmail team did e-mail some users, letting them know that Microsoft was planning to disable the DAV protocol that Outlook Express uses to access your Hotmail inbox. Many of you e-mailed us, expressing strong feelings on this matter, and we heard you loud and clear! The DAV protocol will NOT be discontinued at this time, and you can continue to use Outlook Express beyond the June 30 transition deadline previously announced. The Hotmail team will provide an update in the coming months. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
YEA for the little guys! We can continue to use Outlook Express to access our Hotmail accounts, if we want to. Some, like me, have already upgraded to Windows Live Mail, as was recommended by Microsoft. What are we gonna do? I'll give you my take on Windows Live Mail, compare it to Outlook Express and tell you whether I will go back to Outlook Express having switched to Windows Live mail already.
Outlook Express (OE) is a POP3 email client that was first introduced with the release of Windows 98. It has been patched and improved slightly over the years, but is truly a dated program, with a very limited future. The last version of Outlook Express is the one that shipped with Windows XP; version 6.0.0.2900. XP service packs add four more digits to the version number. I have upgraded to Service Pack 3 and my full version of Outlook Express is 6.0.0.2900.5512. Microsoft has no further plans to distribute this email client, in any newer version of Windows. It is not included in Windows Vista. It is soon to become part of Internet antiquity. That said, it works fine, as is! It displays a list of folders on the left side bar, to which you can add as many custom folders as you wish. You can create sub-folders of folders, so you might add a Sent Items folder to a folder for incoming messages for your website, keeping all related incoming and outgoing messages in one section. You are able to create manual filter rules to deal with spam, or to sort legitimate messages into your preferred folders.
Windows Live Mail is the newest POP3 email client from Microsoft and is meant to replace Outlook Express (OE). It is an improvement on the Windows Mail client that shipped with Windows Vista. Windows Live Mail (WLM) offers improvements over Outlook Express in appearance and function. It offers to import your email accounts, folders and rules from your Outlook Express installation, which is very useful. It comes with a built-in junk mail filter that uses intelligence, live updates and analysis to flag spam messages. It does flag a lot of false positives though, so it's not that smart. You can still create your own filter rules or import rules from Outlook Express, if you had any. WLM provides a new folders pane on he left that shows all of your email accounts, from the top down, then all of your personal folders, following the accounts. This is a bit confusing for OE users, you are only used to seeing folders on the left side. I have about 24 POP3 accounts and the list is quite long, on the left side, pushing my folders way down. The accounts can be expanded to show separate sub-folders for Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Junk, and Deleted messages, for each account. This gets noisy when you have lots of accounts. In this case it's best to collapse the accounts to only show each account name, not the contents. The same can be done for the folders; they can be expanded or collapsed. Unfortunately, I have not found any way to hide the accounts and just display the folders, in the Folders Bar. This is the major thorn in my side.
So, could I go back to Outlook Express, now that Microsoft has given it a reprieve? I couldn't import the newer messages from it, as they are stored in a different format than Outlook Express uses. I would have to drag and drop all new emails from Windows Live Mail into the corresponding Outlook Express folders, using drag and drop. It's doable, but time consuming. Also, once you reach a certain unspecified number of accounts in Outlook Express - adding new ones tends to mess up existing accounts, for reasons unknown. Windows Live Mail doesn't seem to suffer from that problem. While the Windows Live Mail junk filter gets it wrong sometimes it doesn't really do any damage. The messages it flags are placed into Junk folders, and you can click o button to tell Windows Live Mail that they are not junk, removing them from the junk database. Outlook Express has no junk filter at all, but then I don't care, because I use MailWasher Pro to screen all incoming email and only allow desirable messages to be delivered to my email client. If anything would drive me back to OE, it would be those damned annoying email account folders, places above my custom folders. For now I will stay with Windows Live Mail and see how things go. Life is about change and Windows Live Mail is a big change from Outlook Express. All future changes will be along the lines of improving Windows Live Mail, not Outlook Express. If I only had a few accounts I would go back, but with two dozen it is a big issue.
Another feature I do like about Windows Live Mail is that is has a customizable Quick View feature. Enabling the Quick View in the Folder bar allows you to display ALL unread, inbox, sent, deleted items and more. In all there are 12 options you can add to or subtract from the Quick View menu. I find it to be the most useful feature of Windows Live Mail. Messages shown as Unread are still sorted into the folders I set up using Email Rules imported from Outlook Express, or created anew, but, instead of having to jump from folder to folder, to read new messages, they are all available in one place. As you read them the unread count decrements to zero, in the status bar. If you switch to read items in another folder and return to the unread folder, it will eventually be empty, when all new messages are read. That is neat.
Do you have to switch? No, not unless you are using Outlook Express to retrieve Hotmail, and not until Microsoft finally does end support for the DAV protocol, someday. If you are using it for non-hotmail accounts there is no reason to stop using it. But, if you are looking for something more modern looking, with a built-in junk filter, and one that links to your other Windows Live services, like MSN Messenger, by all means try Windows Live Mail. You can read all about it here: http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview and download it if you wish.
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