Finally, there’s an update regarding the @live.com email addresses! Last year around this time, it was rumored that they were going to be released. We waited, and waited, and nothing ever came of it. Some of you had the opportunity to claim your address last year using tricks that we posted (here, here, and here). If you managed to get one, hopefully those email addresses will still be valid once Microsoft makes them available globally.
LiveSide pointed out a posting from the Product Manager for Windows Live in Toronto where he explains that @live.com addresses (and all @live.xx– depending on the country you live in) will be available starting sometime in the Fall. He also explains that current Hotmail addresses will remain the same, and there’s no guarantee that you will receive the same name for a Live.com address as you had for you Hotmail address.(e.g., just because you have ashley@hotmail.com doesn’t mean that you will get ashley@live.com). It’ll be on a first come, first serve basis.
Additionally, he points out that you’ll only be able to migrate your contact information to your new account. All of your emails that you have saved over time will remain with your previous account, and if you wanted them moved to your new account, you will have to forward them manually.
Many people have been patiently waiting to get their hands on an @live.com address, so it’s nice to get an official update and know that they will actually be coming sometime this Fall. Unfortunately, I think many Hotmail users will be disappointed when they find out that the only thing they’ll be able to migrate to the new account is contacts. Things such as “Windows Live Spaces contents (photos, blogs, etc), emails, subscription status (hotmail plus or premium), association with other products (Favourites, OneCare, etc) will stay with the existing account. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if this will keep people from switching to the new brand, and just sticking with their trusty Hotmail account.
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Tags: Web Sites, Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Mail
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Yeah, I doubt people will switch over very quickly. Losing all of your Emails sucks! This is sort of like when Yahoo! announced the inclusion of the dot “.” in email addresses. In both you get the address you want w/out several numbers at the end. The good thing about when Y! did it is they made the second address still connected to the first, so both maintain the the same Emails, contacts… With the Live situation, if you ever wanted to look back on old Emails, you’d have to log into the other address.
I recently switched from an sbcglobal ISP provided address (uses Y! mail) to a plain Yahoo address. Luckily, since the ISP address gets POP3, I could pop my Emails by the hundreds, maintaining the original message header info (time, from…) and manually sorting massive quantities into the proper folders. It took a little while and I often had to reload the page because POPing several hundred messages into Y!MB at once usually crashed it. After refreshing, I would usually have maybe a third or half of what I was POPing, so then I’d just POP the rest. I even got the dreaded Error Code 5 a couple times, but then I just signed out/in and Y!MB worked fine. Y!MB was VERY helpful for this because it let me scroll through folders’ entire contents, so I didn’t have to constantly hit NEXT to find where a partial POP left off. Y!MB even lets you drag messages in and out of the sent folder (possibly partially by my request) so I even synced sent messages. Now I have a fully synchronized Email account, and w/ the Y! Photos to Flickr transition, I was able to sync my pics over to my @Yahoo.com email address as well
In the Hotmail>Live situation, this couldn’t be done unless they paid for POP. Otherwise they’d have to forward Emails one by one, taking hours and breaking from and date info.
I think web based mail should have some easy sync method. You should be able to transfer Emails and contacts from one provider to another, like you can with desktop mail. And it should always be reversible. If Webmail was more like this, people would be less likely to use the same Email site their whole life, thus encouraging competition.
I definitely agree with you netster on the syncing. I think the different email services should all let you download your emails as a single file or upload the same file to restore them. This would also eliminate some of the worry that you’ll lose all of your online email.