# How can I free myself of Hotmail's chains? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 23, 2004, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-free-myself-of-hotmails-chains/265743 "2004-09-23T20:18:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![daffyduck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ec9cab/32.png) [@daffyduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/daffyduck)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2004, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-free-myself-of-hotmails-chains/265743/21 "2004-10-19T22:08:12Z")
Access Hotmail with Outlook Express. Presto! ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-free-myself-of-hotmails-chains/265743/22 "2004-10-20T01:08:22Z")
I am not an avid hotmail user (I keep an account for testing purposes) and I just noticed this “problem” this week when one of our email hosting clients complained that we were somehow messing with his links in email (what??) Hotmail parses the links before you get them, so right-click “Open in a new window” doesn’t work. The link changes from: ```auto My Link ``` to something like this: ```auto My Link ``` That is, the actual HTML of the email changes from the first format to the second. There’s no getting around it unless you don’t open your mail from a Hotmail/MSN webmail interface. Try outlook as daffyduck suggests (although I am not sure if that’s available with the free Hotmail accounts). ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-free-myself-of-hotmails-chains/265743/23 "2004-10-20T01:53:58Z")
> [@daffyduck](#): > > Access Hotmail with Outlook Express. Presto! Isn’t that going to be charged for soon? ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-free-myself-of-hotmails-chains/265743/24 "2004-10-20T05:10:31Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > Anyways, how do you cope with this? Short of always c&ping links or abandoning this POS service? Didn’t there used to be a nifty keyboard shortcut that let you escape frames into a new window or something? If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can use [this thingy I wrote](http://www.area.com/ntucker/stuff/snotmail/). ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2004, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-free-myself-of-hotmails-chains/265743/25 "2004-10-20T12:12:36Z")
I’ve never understood why the “default” free email everyone has seems to be Hotmail. Yahoo is also free, now has 100MB of space, and is so much better in every respect. I’ve never had a Hotmail account, but have three Yahoo ones. ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-free-myself-of-hotmails-chains/265743/26 "2004-10-21T22:19:03Z")
Seems like I’m the last one but I _finally_ got my 250Mb upgrade this afternoon. I wonder how they organized who got it when? I’ve been actively using Hotmail for at least 7 years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-free-myself-of-hotmails-chains/265743.md?page=1)