From

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+offers...op&tag=nl.e703


Microsoft said Wednesday that it has started offering a paid-subscription version of its Outlook e-mail program, marking the first time the software giant has made a component of Office available as a subscription service.

Known as Microsoft Office Outlook Live, the service includes a subscription version of Outlook 2003 to connect with Hotmail or MSN e-mail accounts. For $59 a year, customers get an e-mail account with 2GB of storage and the ability to send individual messages with up to 20MB of attachments. Customers can also check multiple e-mail accounts, including corporate accounts that are managed through an Exchange server.
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This sure sounds close to the hotmail plus service I now pay $19.95 for.

We used to use MSN as our ISP, and when we went to SBC/Yahoo DSL, I transferred my wife's msn.com email domain address to hotmail plus. We just open Outlook, it looks for a hotmail server, authenticates, then downloads/uploads.

I'll be pretty irritated if Mr. Softy cranks what I currently have up to $59.95. I really don't need any additional features that are proposed for the new subscription price.

It was a waste of money when it was free. What makes Micro$oft think that folks will want to pay for an Outlook service? Better to use a decent email provider and a client like Thunderbird

This is more than just an interface to Hotmail; It seems like it includes a subscription to Outlook itself. Consdiering the retil price of Outlook it might be a decent deal for some people.

You missed my point completely didn't you? Outlook is a waste of money at any price. Stick with a secure fast and reliable email client such as Thunderbird - it will import all your existing Outlook email, address book and account settings. It doesn't throw a hissy fit when its email folder gets too big and it includes strong anti-spam filtering. Why pay for a piece of junk when you can get a much better product for free?

No, I think it is YOU that is missing the point. I said it is a solution for SOME people. I too am a happy Thunderbird user but Outlook, as much as a POS as it may be is something you can't always get rid of;

Exchange connectivity, syncing with Activesync etc... Try THAT with Thunderbird.

Not everyone can get away with using Thunderbird, in the corporate world Outlook is the de facto standard (and can be applied to policies), you simply can't expect everyone to be able to quit using it.

One of the main reasons my wife still uses it (she has a Dell Axim)

Craig6z
(sorry I was in moderator mode while logged in)

I don't use Outlook for mail, but I am still stuck with its calendar functions. Anyone have a favorite replacement for that? I'd love to stop using Outlook completely...

Thunderbird blows. After much goading from ScottC and others, I downloaded it and gave it a try. More or less the same functionality, but that editor sucks, sucks, sucks. Ugly, clunky UI, nonexistant multi-language support. no inline spell or grammar checking, etc. It *did* import all of my Outlook messages, but lost all of the search folders, making it basically useless.

A day later I was back to Outlook. It isn't perfect but for me it is a hell of a lot better.

Personal, or sharing with a group?

I'm willing to accept ALL those weak points just to be able to stay away from Outlook. Heck, I'd accept electric shocks each time I receive an email just to stay away from Outlook.

Sarah - I''m afraid you're a bit behind the times. The size of the pst thing has been fixed in Outolook 2003. Also, I have been running Outlook and Thunderbird in parallel on the same corpus of email for quite some time. Outlook is much better at detecting spam than Thunderbird, though both have an unacceptably high false positive rate (I'm one of the developers of Spamassassin in my "copious free time", so I can say with some confidence that my caparison of spam detectiopn abilities is a valid one, for me anyway, ymmv). Personally, I find the UI of Thunderbird atrocious compared to Outlook, but that may just be a matter of preference. Finally, Outlook is not just a Mail User Agent. If you use the calendaring (especially shared calendaring, which can also be done without an Exchange server, btw) & to-do features of Outlook, there is no comparison between the two apps.

Thunderbird is a good app. I use it on my Linux box all the time for my work email (but use mutt for my personal mail).