I’m perfectly happy with my primary email service, but just in case, also have Yahoo, Hotmail and Cox services, as all are free.
I keep hearing good things about Gmail, so did a search and found out that as I am already signed up to Hotmail, all I have to do is log out from that and set up another account.
What I don’t understand is what benefit Gmail has from my regular Hotmail account for sending and receiving email. Is there any? If so, what is the difference?
I haven’t used a Hotmail account for years, so i’m not quite sure what you mean by this. Set up another account where? In Hotmail?
AFAIK, for Gmail you just sign up for a Gmail account at Google. I wasn’t aware that there was any connection between Gmail and Hotmail, although i could be wrong about that.
I use my Gmail account essentially as an email storage account. I copy all my incoming and outgoing mail to it, giving me a complete online archive of all my mail, whenever i need it.
Perhaps the greatest thing about Gmail, especially for people who have put up with less efficient systems in the past, is the brilliance of its search capabilities. Of course, given Google’s genesis as a search engine, this isn’t too surprising, but it really is amazing at how good Gmail is at finding emails. The number of emails in my account is well into 5 figures, and finding a vaguely-remembered email from six years ago takes only a matter of seconds in Gmail.
Gmail does a bit of getting used to, because there are no folders, only labels. You can label emails and conversations to make them even easier to find. The absence of folders is sometimes a bit offputting to people who are used to arranging their correspondence in folders, but you get used to it pretty quickly.
I’m not a huge fan of Gmail, but I did create an account to use Reader and Apps and Google Chat, and when I originally signed up, I used my hotmail account. (You can use any 3rd-party email address, for that matter.) There’s no linkage between the two services, so Google promptly assigned me another address with an @gmail.com suffix. The only way it’s different is that when signing in, I can use my hotmail email address instead of having to remember a different signin name.
Honestly, websites that insist on me picking a new username irritate me (present company excluded, of course.) I have an entire spreadsheet to keep track of what signin name I had to use of different sites (kept as a google spreadsheet, of course) instead of just using the same email address, which is guaranteed unique, everywhere.
Unless I missed a memo somewhere along the way, there’s no specific linkage between gmail and hotmail.
This is totally confusing. Hotmail and Gmail are entirely different and separate things. I think you got mixed up along the way. You may need to clarify.
I think perhaps the OP is talking about gmail’s “send as” facility, whereby you can send as any address (providing you prove you own it), and receive emails from it via POP. Because Hotmail (okay, live.com) now supports POP access, you can indeed send from gmail as your hotmail address, and receive your hotmail using the gmail interface. Be aware, though, that due to the way gmail does this, anyone using Outlook will see your emails as being from “you@gmail.com on behalf of you@hotmail.com”, which a lot of people will find confusing (you’ll get interminable questions about which address to use). It might just be easier to tell people your new gmail address.
Advantages? Gmail’s interface is so much better than hotmail’s it’s not even funny. The organisation of emails into conversational threads is revelatory if you’ve not used it before, and the excellent search implementation means you don’t have to faff about with folders or indeed much clearing out of your inbox at all; just periodically archive your emails and they’ll remain searchable without cluttering the place up. The spam filtering is also top notch (although hotmail’s is excellent as well, I’ve found).
There’s a few irritations (it has a tendency to freeze in Opera on occasion, for example), but it’s the best email interface, either web-based or standalone software, that I’ve ever used.
I own no stock in Google. 
If you archive everything you’ve labeled, it will appear as if you’ve put everything into folders. The labeled emails will no longer appear in your inbox.
I am interested in knowing more about this.
I have been using hotmail with Outlook Express (and http protocol) since hotmail was invented. Recently Hotmail said they would cease supporting http & Outlook Express. Then they backed off when people complained and gave it a reprieve but it seems they still intend to do it. I have said that as soon as I cannot access Hotmail with Outlook Express I stop using it.
I believe Hotmail (like Yahoo) offered POP3 access if you paid.
Now you say Hotmail will offer free POP3 access to everyone? I want to know more!
Ah, sorry, you’re right. It’s Hotmail Plus users only. I was only aware of this because a friend uses that service, and I’d forgotten the paying distinction. Oops.
Edit: however, in the Hotmail options you can set a forwarding address, so the OP can still get his Hotmail delivered to his GMail account…
Gah, it’s not my night. Stoopid edit window. From Hotmail:
What an exceedingly useless feature. And what’s a “custom domain” when it’s at home?
So finally, no, the OP can not get his Hotmail into GMail unless he pays for POP.
And on that note I’m going to bed before I sow any more confusion.
I guess a “custom domain” would be a company’s domain as opposed to yahoo, gmail, etc. Well, if that is the case I could forward my hotmail to some private domain (of which I have several to choose from). In fact I have found that foreign domains, even though they may be free and public, similar to hotmail, are often accepted in the USA when public domain (like hotmail) email addresses are not. I suppose they have a list (hotmail, yahoo, etc) of blocked domains but foreign ones are not blocked.
At any rate, Hotmail has been my primary private address for many years now but the day I cannot use it with Outlook Express is the day I switch to Gmail which allows POP3 without problem.
Hi Geoff.
Hotmail and Gmail are completely different. There may be some confusion in that you can sign up for a Yahoo account giving Gmail as your preferred email address. Apart from that I can’t think of any other synergies.
That was my guess, but it wouldn’t let me use my personal domain. It turns out to be Microsoft’s equivalent of Google Apps for Domains, i.e. they’ll host services that you can point to with nice friendly names using your own domain. So you could forward you@hotmail.com to you@yourdomain.com, provided that the latter was also hosted by Microsoft. Not particularly useful, I have to say.
Oh, ok. I agree.
Why not just try out GMail to see if you like it?
It’s free.
I keep a number of gmail accounts along with a hotmail account and use them for various purposes. Surely you’ll want one email address for personal use and another for conducting business on the internet or registering at various public sites such as message boards…
One feature I like for my main gmail accounts is the chat feature for contacts of my choice; I can see who is online and get rid of a quick memo via live chat from right inside the account.
One feature I don’t like is the way emails are tied together as “conversations.” If you send out an email to 5 family members and they reply at assorted times it becomes tedious to sort out who said what when and whether or not there is a new reply.
I have found gmail’s spam filter to be better than hotmail’s but since I don’t give out my main gmail account to most retailers that may be an inaccurate observation.
I already have several Gmail accounts with POP3 access but I continue to keep my hotmail account as my primary one because that is what people I know have had since forever. If Hotmail cannot be accessed with Outlook Express then I will move my primary contact to Gmail.