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June 17, 2006
Windows Live Mail 'Land Rush'
Microsoft have been building the next generation of their web based e-mail service Hotmail called Windows Live Mail; Hotmail offered a 2MB mailbox as standard, Windows Live Mail are giving you 2GB straight up of the bat, Drag and Drop, Right-Clicking, Anti-Phishing, Junk E-mail and Rich text editing. If you have ever used Outlook Web Access, the backend on a Microsoft Exchange Server you will find it a very familiar and powerful experience compared to standard Hotmail e-mail interface. You can see what the new interface and features are over here and as soon as I get a signup link I will post that here on the blog. Oh it is completely FREE also and just as the standard Hotmail service there is no POP3 access.
On Tuesday at some time in the US Microsoft will be making available the domains @live.com and @windowslive.com available for users worldwide to register and start using the new mail service. There has been great interest in this another internet land rush to get a hold of yourname@live.com or yourname@windowslive.com and get away from your old myname45@hotmail.com. Currently there is no way to migrate your old mail, contacts or other data you have in your Hotmail account so it is a fresh start for now on a new e-mail address, once up and running you can get over to your Hotmail account and let your contacts know your new e-mail address.
The land rush has been so highly anticipated that all over the web early last night it was either leaked or someone was creative enough to find a way to jump the queue and after no doubt Microsoft noticing many new users signing up they quickly closed that down. So I would expect john@live.com may have already been snapped up.
If you are keen on getting the toad@live.com e-mail address to use with the new service and starting to move away from the old Hotmail interface and start using a much richer interface for your e-mail online, I would suggest you start by getting an e-mail address that is not assigned with @hotmail.com or @msn.com and be ready to ride early next week. The process so far appears to be you create a new LiveID (MSN Passport) for an e-mail account that is not assigned to either a @hotmail.com or @msn.com address such as your free FastMail account which can be assigned as a ‘backup contact' for password retieval if you forget it. And after the registration process completes Microsoft releases the toad@fastmail.fm account from the Windows LiveID service and you can continue to use your toad@fastmail.fm as you always have. This process may change due to the 'sooners' last night so don’t take the instructions here as the official 'land rush' rules.
If you are not particularly fancied to having a ‘Microsoft ‘@live.com e-mail address and would like to still use the service for your e-mail you can go over to Windows Live Custom Domains and attach your current internet domain name’s mail records onto the new service and have yourname@yourdomain.com.au using the Windows Live Mail interface. If you are going to use an existing domain you own I would recommend reading the Windows Live Custom Domains FAQ to fully understand the implications of moving your current e-mail internet domain over to the site as once you do this you will no longer have access to your e-mail from the location it is delivered to currently.
Posted by Stephen at June 17, 2006 04:55 PM
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Comments
Other cool Addresses could be:
Stayin@live.com
Snakes@live.com
Deador@live.com
Posted by: Daniel Woods at June 17, 2006 07:44 PM
Surely if you were going to sign up for a webmail service, you should at least sign up for one with POP access, like gmail or Yahoo mail, rather than the Microsoft offering, as nice as the interface might be. 2Gb or no 2Gb, wouldn't you think it's kind of important to be able to download your mail if you want to, and to keep a complete archive etc? I know so many people who are trapped in Hotmail addresses, having to put up with the web interface whether they like it or not, because they can't choose their own client. When their account eventually starts filling with spam, they can't even migrate to a new one while painlessly checking the old one for residual mail.
Posted by: Dan at June 17, 2006 10:03 PM
I've been beta testing Live mail for a while now, so nyah. :)
Posted by: Dogboy at June 20, 2006 11:53 AM