For crying out loud, why does Microsoft love to shoot themselves in the
foot! We want to use Outlook to consolidate all our e-mail, but then they
pull tricks like NOT allowing us to connect to certain Hotmail accounts or
by limiting our Hotmail attachment downloads to ONE minute? Furthermore, we
waste hours (sometimes days) trying to decipher some vague error message in
order to figure out why we cannot connect or stay connected, only to find
out that it is by Microsoft design! Golly sakes, if you cripple the
program, have the decency to display a message that says so when you
disconnect us. By the way, in addition to these free Hotmail accounts, we
do hold many MSN premium accounts that we pay you for, but not for long at
this rate. You spend millions on advertising to sell your product and then
do everything possible to make us buy your competitor's programs. We would
love to use Outlook for consolidating all our communications including
e-mail, fax, even voice phone messages, but it appears this will never
happen. Why should it, we can't even connect!

Richard wrote:

For crying out loud, why does Microsoft love to shoot themselves in
the foot! We want to use Outlook to consolidate all our e-mail, but
then they pull tricks like NOT allowing us to connect to certain
Hotmail accounts

As long as you pay for your Hotmail account, there is no limit to connecting
with it using Outlook. How is that any different than any other ISP? You
certainly have to pay Comcast or AT&T to connect to one of their mail
servers.

or by limiting our Hotmail attachment downloads to
ONE minute?

Hadn't heard of this. I've never experienced it.

Furthermore, we waste hours (sometimes days) trying to
decipher some vague error message in order to figure out why we
cannot connect or stay connected, only to find out that it is by
Microsoft design!

I do agree that some of the error messages are less than helpful.

Golly sakes, if you cripple the program, have the
decency to display a message that says so when you disconnect us. By
the way, in addition to these free Hotmail accounts, we do hold many
MSN premium accounts that we pay you for, but not for long at this
rate.

So, do you also believe that if you buy three cars from Chrysler that they
should give you a fourth one?

You spend millions on advertising to sell your product and
then do everything possible to make us buy your competitor's
programs.

Nothing in the world makes you use any Microsoft product. If you don't like
its features or can find a more suitable product, buy that one. If there
are no other products that suit your needs, then pay for what you need.
--
Brian Tillman

Brian,

Thank you for the reply, but you mis-construed the purpose of our
frustration. Our frustration has nothing to do with trying to milk free
services out of Microsoft or Hotmail. We actually do pay for most of our
services, including the software we use with those services. The problem
centers around the propensity of Microsoft products (as well as other
vendors) to send users on unnecessary wild goose chases. Readers might
consider the following:

1) Why does Outlook, versus Hotmail, limit an attachment download to
one minute? BTW this is per Hotmail technical support, not me. Please note
that I have no problem with Hotmail limiting the download time on a free
account. However, the retail Outlook product, on the other hand, has no
reason to purposely limit a download without a clear error message to that
effect, especially when the limit is by design.

2) Per Hotmail technical support, you can simply use the free version
of Outlook Express, included with Windows, with absolutely no limits
imposed on the attachment download times. We concur, in that we used this
as a download work-around for our e-mails with large attachments. Free
Outlook Express - no time limits? Retail version of Outlook - one minute?
It doesn't make much sense.

3) Why prevent Outlook from accessing Hotmail accounts anyway? We
received a notice about a year ago that this might be the case, however they
had grand-fathered our long-standing free family Hotmail account. Again, I
have no problem with limiting or even cancelling our free account. But why
prevent Outlook, the paid product, from accessing free accounts with no
clear warning to the user trying to innocently make the connection?

4) What good is the free account if you can't enjoy the convenvience
of accessing it from within Outlook? On the other hand, what good is
Outlook if you can't access all your e-mail accounts. Sure, the intention
may be to lure users onto their webpage, but the frustration over the simple
matter of a convenient connection entirely undermines the advertising gain?

5) THE SOLUTION - A clear message explaining the reason for the one
minute disconnect or the reason for not being able to connect in the first
place. Both of these issues are apparently by design and could surely
include either clear error messages or clear links to a short knowledge base
article. This converts 3 or 4 days of frustration into a one-minute error
messge.

6) True, we don't have to buy any Microsoft products, but that doesn't
mean we relinquish the right to complain or suggest improvements, especially
after we have paid for the product. And the free Chrysler car thing . . .
as I said above, our intent never was to demand a free service nor to
prevent provider from limiting the terms of those services. Just frustrated
when issues known to Microsoft can generate such a waste of time on behalf
of their paying customers.

Thanks again for the reply

1) Why does Outlook, versus Hotmail, limit an attachment download to
one minute? BTW this is per Hotmail technical support, not me. Please
note that I have no problem with Hotmail limiting the download time on a
free account. However, the retail Outlook product, on the other hand, has
no reason to purposely limit a download without a clear error message to
that effect, especially when the limit is by design.

Outlook doesn't do it intentionally to PO hotmail users. It may be a
limitation caused by how the transport is written.

2) Per Hotmail technical support, you can simply use the free version
of Outlook Express, included with Windows, with absolutely no limits
imposed on the attachment download times. We concur, in that we used this
as a download work-around for our e-mails with large attachments. Free
Outlook Express - no time limits? Retail version of Outlook - one minute?
It doesn't make much sense.

3) Why prevent Outlook from accessing Hotmail accounts anyway? We
received a notice about a year ago that this might be the case, however
they had grand-fathered our long-standing free family Hotmail account.
Again, I have no problem with limiting or even cancelling our free
account. But why prevent Outlook, the paid product, from accessing free
accounts with no clear warning to the user trying to innocently make the
connection?

It's not outlook that is prevented- it's the HTTP protocol that is now for
paid users only and Outlook Express can't be used to access the accounts if
Outlook can't. Old accounts were grandfathered in.
http://www.slipstick.com/addins/serv...ne.htm#hotmail

4) What good is the free account if you can't enjoy the convenvience
of accessing it from within Outlook? On the other hand, what good is
Outlook if you can't access all your e-mail accounts. Sure, the intention
may be to lure users onto their webpage, but the frustration over the
simple matter of a convenient connection entirely undermines the
advertising gain?

5) THE SOLUTION - A clear message explaining the reason for the one
minute disconnect or the reason for not being able to connect in the first
place. Both of these issues are apparently by design and could surely
include either clear error messages or clear links to a short knowledge
base article. This converts 3 or 4 days of frustration into a one-minute
error messge.

6) True, we don't have to buy any Microsoft products, but that
doesn't mean we relinquish the right to complain or suggest improvements,
especially after we have paid for the product. And the free Chrysler car
thing . . . as I said above, our intent never was to demand a free service
nor to prevent provider from limiting the terms of those services. Just
frustrated when issues known to Microsoft can generate such a waste of
time on behalf of their paying customers.

Thanks again for the reply

Richard wrote:

1) Why does Outlook, versus Hotmail, limit an attachment
download to one minute? BTW this is per Hotmail technical support,
not me. Please note that I have no problem with Hotmail limiting the
download time on a free account. However, the retail Outlook
product, on the other hand, has no reason to purposely limit a
download without a clear error message to that effect, especially
when the limit is by design.

Outlook in no way limits download times, as far as I can tell. I've never
encountered it myself.

3) Why prevent Outlook from accessing Hotmail accounts anyway? We
received a notice about a year ago that this might be the case,
however they had grand-fathered our long-standing free family Hotmail
account. Again, I have no problem with limiting or even cancelling
our free account. But why prevent Outlook, the paid product, from
accessing free accounts with no clear warning to the user trying to
innocently make the connection?

It does warn the user and quite clearly. The message I've seen states that
you need a subscription to access Hotmail account.

4) What good is the free account if you can't enjoy the
convenvience of accessing it from within Outlook?

The good is that you can access it from anywhere in the world with any
browser and additional licensed software is unnecessary.

On the other hand,
what good is Outlook if you can't access all your e-mail accounts.

Many, even perhaps most, businesses do not allow their employees to access
Internet mail sites because those sites are out of the IT department's
control and can't be, for example, checked for viruses. Since Outlook is a
business-targeted product, it's no loss.

6) True, we don't have to buy any Microsoft products, but that
doesn't mean we relinquish the right to complain or suggest
improvements, especially after we have paid for the product. And the
free Chrysler car thing . . . as I said above, our intent never was
to demand a free service nor to prevent provider from limiting the
terms of those services. Just frustrated when issues known to
Microsoft can generate such a waste of time on behalf of their paying
customers.

Perhaps I did misconstrue your complain. Your words seemed to indicate that
since you pay Microsoft for some accounts that you believed they should
allow you to access the free accounts as well with the same tool.
--
Brian Tillman

Thanks, Brian, you're both a gentleman and a scholar!

do hold many MSN premium accounts that we pay you for

Each msn account is allowed 10 associated email accounts - are you using
them all? if not, add your hotmails to it.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/

Outlook Tips: http://www.outlook-tips.net/
Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center: http://www.slipstick.com
Subscribe to Exchange Messaging Outlook newsletter:



"Richard" wrote in message
...
For crying out loud, why does Microsoft love to shoot themselves in the
foot! We want to use Outlook to consolidate all our e-mail, but then they
pull tricks like NOT allowing us to connect to certain Hotmail accounts or
by limiting our Hotmail attachment downloads to ONE minute? Furthermore,
we waste hours (sometimes days) trying to decipher some vague error
message in order to figure out why we cannot connect or stay connected,
only to find out that it is by Microsoft design! Golly sakes, if you
cripple the program, have the decency to display a message that says so
when you disconnect us. By the way, in addition to these free Hotmail
accounts, we do hold many MSN premium accounts that we pay you for, but
not for long at this rate. You spend millions on advertising to sell your
product and then do everything possible to make us buy your competitor's
programs. We would love to use Outlook for consolidating all our
communications including e-mail, fax, even voice phone messages, but it
appears this will never happen. Why should it, we can't even connect!

Diane,

We (readers) are blessed by the subtlety of Microsoft's defense. Your
very helpful response, as an MVP, is preceded by the precisely
"un-helpful" though accurate response of an non-MVP.

Thank you Diane!
Thank you Microsoft
"As we sow, so shall we reap" from Unknown

Thank you, Diane. Unlike some of the other responses, you actually provided
a very useful hint for a very frustrated customer, Thank You !