Is outlook.com a game changer?
 

So I decided to see what all the fuss is about and took a look around outlook.com. It's not bad!

I've been a yahoo email user since it started (all those years ago), and think it is still the best email provider in the world but outlook is getting there.. and I'm finally tempted to switch. I love the tiles design and once skype is launched on it, it will be hard to beat.

However, there are still a few things that stick out in my mind...

• It doesn't provide unlimited storage unlike yahoo.
• I'm not convinced Microsoft have sorted the security issues they had earlier in the year.
• SPAM! Will it be honey to the spam bee, like hotmail was?

What do you all think?

Given the amount of spam I get on my hotmail, I'm willing to check it out and see if spam reduces on their new service.

I posted this picture on Facebook earlier in the week when I first tried it.

I figure if they can catch their own stuff as SPAM, it may be worth trying for a change. Somebody over at Microsoft probably is not laughing now.

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/2985/outlookl.jpg

It does have unlimited storage.

I'm not a convert at this point, but I like it. The SPAM filter has been amazing thus far. I was getting literally hundreds of SPAM messages a day in my hotmail inbox, rendering it unusable. So far every single one of those has been dropping into my SPAM filter, leaving me with a 0 count in my inbox since the introduction Tuesday.

What is outlook.com -- just a re-packaged hotmail?

How is it that outlook.com and hotmail would be using two different spam filters?

Can you migrate your own domains to outlook.com (like Google Apps)?

Just moved my Hotmail account over. Wow. Very slick.

Absolutely love the "Schedule cleanup" functionality. I wish Gmail had this. There is similar functionality in Thunderbird, but it doesn't work at all (and a real PITA to setup).

Sort of, but not really. it's a lot better. On par with gmail.


I have no idea, but it seems to work really well since I migrated over.

I don't get it.

Why is this any better than using Outlook on my laptop and syncing that with my iPad and iPhone? (as well as the company Droid)?? What does this new service provide that I don't already have?

:confused: :confused:

So I can see that it's all the same features I get on live.com after logging into my hotmail account.

I still am not sure how it's not just hotmail.com/live.com with exactly the same functionality but a different, but quite similar*, interface.

*meaning the menu options are still the same, the organization of content is the same, navigation steps are still the same, etc.

yahoo better than gmail!?
 

Does anyone really think yahoo is better than gmail? I have not been able to get my yahoo outgoing mail to sync with iphone at a reasonable time and I have never been able to get yahoo calander to sync with iphone. I intall gmail once in my iphone and everything works perfect. Unfortunately most of my mail is still on Yahoo and I have a lot of mail

Ummm... you do realize that not everyone has Outlook on their "laptop" correct? In fact, I'd hazard to guess that not even the majority of folks (particularly for personal use) have Outlook on their laptop.

Regards

And a majority of people, a majority of the time, don't have their laptop in front of them. If you have no need for web-based email then no, outlook.com is not for you.

I typed in outlook.com and was taken to my existing hotmail.com account with a different color scheme. I guess the login mechanism is the same (I was logged into hotmail in another tab). It looks/functions identically to me, so far, compared to hotmail. But all I use is email, perhaps it has a bunch of twitter/facebook/foursquare/humptihump integration that I'm not seeing/have no interest in.

Well, after a day or so of using outlook.com instead of traditional hotmail, I have to say, it filters spam much better. I usually get about 4-6 spam mails per day, and so far I have received none.

You might have a setup problem. My Yahoo outgoing mail syncs fairly quickly, and calendar syncs with my iPhone and iPad. I forgot how I did it, because I did it about 3 years ago, but I think you need to find the calDAV or webDAV address and just click on it, and iOS will do the rest.

What email back end are you using for Outlook? A Corporate Exchange Server?

You may be confused by what outlook.com is. It is not an email client like Microsoft, it is a web-based email service. It does have a rich web client as a front end and does support POP and IMAP so you could even use your Outlook mail client on your laptop with outlook.com.

Yes.


Clearly, which is why I made my post. What advantage does outlook.com offer to someone using Outlook with a corporate exchange server?

Not running a corporate exchange server would be a huge advantage for people who don't need it.

outlook.com is basically equivalent to gmail. Consider it the successor to hotmail.

You wouldn't use either one for corporate email.

outlook is an email client, you can use outlook with an exchange server, an imap server, a pop server or all of the above at the same time with different email accounts. one or more of those accounts might be hosted on outlook.com.

Yes, I guess you can argue that the name is a bit confusing.

-David

It appears to be hotmail but with a new UI. How is it different?

The new UI allows for more messages to be seen on the screen

It links to a bunch of social networks like facebook, twitter, google, linked in etc

Tablets and Iphone users get active sync to manage their accounts

The sweep feature moves stuff for you instead of you having to move things one by one

It's adding skydrive to compete on a more even platform with services like DropBox

Less ads, and controls when you see them

Make skype calls from your inbox

It's tied with the web versions of the office suite, so you can make edits to documents from you inbox

Mailbox quick views

Good summary. I am a casual hotmail user so I wasn't sure what bells and whistles had been added.

(And given the thread topic - "game changer" - I was poking around not looking for bells/whistles.)

The spam filtering is really good.

I think they (media) is calling it a game changer because it may allow them to compete on the same platform as gmail. If there was no gmail it would be significant changes, but it's catch up just to get to the same place.

Anyone have an answer?

It looks like the current answer is no, but I'm hoping for a solution in the future.

Office 365 is Microsoft's hosted cloud services. It's been a while since I looked into it, but two things turned me off to them: 1. There is no free basic level service, and 2. Microsoft requires you to delegate your domain's DNS to their name servers.

be careful to read the fine print if you send lots of emails - this won't impact much on personal accounts, but if you also have some automated processes that make heavy use of email you can get caught (as happened to whoever signed up a certain global company I may be familiar with, leading to conference calls into the wee hours of the morning and much gnashing of teeth :mad:)

- 30 outbound emails per minute
- 500 or 1500 emails per rolling 24 hr period (number depends on how much you pay, a couple of accounts on a large enterprise can be upgraded to 6000)
- various throttling limits on connection count, CPU time, authentication time (if setup to use your own Active Directory, not theirs).
- sending is slow, the solution was to receive via 365 and send via internal SMTP server. (lucky 'the cloud' would save us? :rolleyes: )

O365 is also drastically slower than the older BPOS when it comes to sending and receiving messages, the BPOS connector sucked - but the email service was at least fast and not throttled back.

I always get a chuckle whenever I see @yahoo.com and @aol.com email addresses.

90% of the time it's from spam, although I do have grandparents and older folk that use yahoo or aol.

I do miss AOL's free trial discs, they made great coasters when entertaining people.

<3 Gmail and Gchat for pretty much everything, I see no reason to switch from google to Outlook.

Funny, about a month ago I was asked to see how many e-mail addresses in our database were both still active (they did not unsubscribe, they did not get a couple of hard bounces in a row) and aol.

I was expecting a couple hundred at most, it was 23,679 out of something like 126,000 valid addresses.

Not surprised as all. Some folks just never change :p

Looks like you can, pretty easily; check this out:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/setup...-domain/24699/

You're a rock star. ^

Bookmarked for tinkering later.

I was really looking forward to doing this, so I checked out the link. Here's an extract:

Step #2: On the next screen, you’ll be provided with a list of custom DNS records that you will have to add to your domain. The following two records are essential:

MX record for handling your mail traffic
It usually reads like abc.pamx1.hotmail.com
SPF record to authenticate your outgoing Outlook emails
It has a fixed value v=spf1 include:hotmail.com ~all
Related reading: Prevents your emails from getting marked as spam

Step #3: While you are on your domain registrar’s page add these custom DNS records for Outlook, create an additional CNAME record if you wish to access the Outlook.com website as a sub-domain of your main website.

For instance, if your website is yourdomain.com, you can setup a CNAME record called “mail” and you will then be access to access Outlook.com from mail.yourdomain.com. The value of the CNAME record should be set as “go.domains.live.com.” (no quotes but period at the end).

BUT but but...what the #*!+ does Step 2 MEAN? What is an MX and an SPF record? Where do I find out what they should be for my purpose? "It usually reads like ....."; what help is that?

This is not "easy", at least not for me, it's techno-babble for techno literates. Might as well be calculus. Anyone got the instructions for dummies? :confused:

First two questions...

1. Who hosts your domain name?
2. Do you host a website with said-domain name? If so, who with?

The MX record indicates what server handles incoming mail for your domain.

The SPF record indicates which servers are allowed to send outgoing email for your domain. The internet is designed so that someone can start up a mail server, say, somewhere in Uganda, and start sending emails out from RobCH.com. The SPF record says "No, emails from RobCH.com that are originating from Uganda are not legitimate" (i.e. they will be treated as spam).

Thanks for the interest.
123-reg.co.uk
No, domain name only used for emails. Currently just forwards incoming to my hotmail inbox.

There's no reason you couldn't just forward them to outlook.com (or just access your hotmail box through outlook.com)

While I'm not familiar with 123-reg.co.uk, for most domain providers offer you an administrative panel where you can change those settings. It's not for the faint of heart, and you should make careful note of what they are before you change them.

Each provider has a different way of doing it, the easiest way to figure it out is to search for mx record in their knowledgebase, they probably have a page explaining how to get to those settings.

Perhaps calling their tech support people is another option? They may be able to walk you through the process.

I used Godaddy for my custom domain for hotmail, and in the help section I seem to recall they had step by step instructions on how to configure your domain including the MX and SPF settings. I suspect you can find similar instructions for your domain registrar - I'd do a Google/Bing/Yahoo search for it.

Thanks again all. I have done as cordelli suggests and simply changed the forwarding arrangements from hotmail to outlook. It all works, even if it's not as clean as it could be.

I still think that GMAIL is best and with gmail hacks that you can use for earning bonus miles and points...its hard to beat...just IMHO