Welcome to Smuggle Me

I recently got an email on my Hotmail account telling me that I needed to upgrade to the Windows Live Hotmail account soon or I would be automatically updated. Well, my wife and kids are out of town today and so I decided that now would be as good of a time as any to upgrade to the Windows Live Hotmail system. I had tried the beta and didn’t really like it, but I figured I didn’t have much of a choice and that it was going to have to happen sometime soon anyway.

Ok, I should stop at this point and say that I’ve been using hotmail since 1997 and I’ve just been too lazy to switch. I know I should have, but I haven’t. Plus, my killer feature is that I use MSN Messenger always. It’s on every computer and is easy to access my email from it. Not to mention notification, etc.

All of this said, I think the upgrade to Windows Live Hotmail today might have just pushed me over the edge where I’m going to have to switch to Gmail. It works ok, but 2 things just bug the heck out of me.

1. Windows Live Hotmail won’t remember the way I have sorted my email in my inbox. It’s ridiculous. It remembered in the old version of Hotmail so why can’t Windows Life Hotmail remember it also. I’ve searched all of the options and can’t find anywhere to get it to remember to sort by date descending. I want my new mail at the bottom and not at the top since I like to read my mail from oldest to newest. Very very annoying to have to do 2 clicks every time I log in for it to sort correctly.

2.Windows Live Hotmail needs to let me turn off the security features. I’m an adult and I know when I shouldn’t look at something in my email. Fine, turn this feature on for all those people who don’t know about spam. However, I’ve searched high and low for the option that lets me turn it off and I can’t find it. If I want to open a virus, then you should let me without having to click to get it to let me. The reality is that Windows Live Hotmail has marked it as unsafe when every time it has been from someone I know and wasn’t worried about the content at all.

Another minor annoyance is that the page reloads too much. Whenever I do any action on Windows Live Hotmail I hear about 3 clicks on my speakers. Why does it need to load and punish my ears with 3 clicks on the speaker. One should be more than enough.

I guess I better start checking out Gmail so I can move over to it.