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Today I’ve changed my email provider from Microsoft’s Hotmail (now Live Mail), to Google’s Gmail. Over the past month of trying to fully switch to Office Outlook, I’ve noticed (and been bothered) by the limitations on services offered by a free (yes, there is a paid version) of Hotmail.

While I do find Hotmail to be a good service if you are a Microsoft fan boy, it’s a constant headache if you separate yourself from them. One huge problem I had with setting up my Hotmail account on Outlook was that I needed to get a plugin for Office to get my account to work. Now, why is it that I have to get a plugin for a Microsoft product to work with a Microsoft product? Aside from setting it up, when I send emails (Yahoo! Mail, and many others do the same) they stitch ads for random crap that nobody wants as a footer to my emails. Not only did I find this a nuisance, but highly unprofessional (I do sometimes use email for serious stuff). Now, these things can be ignored to an extent, but recently I’ve noticed that I can’t synchronize my calendar with Hotmail (gayer service, or gayest service?), and the fact that they have recently added a pretend attempt to service Hotmail in “full mode” to Opera users.

You may wonder why I’d even need to login to Hotmail via web if I already have Outlook configured. The answer to that is Hotmail limits all features when using Outlook on a free account to email, and contacts. Back to topic, if you are an Opera user, you may notice that when you load your Hotmail (if you use it) that it attempts to load “full mode” first, then gives the option for “classic mode”. Now I had no problem with being stuck with Classic Mode in the first place, but when you wave the new version in my face to make me think I have it, then it not work, screw you.

Once I noticed this, I immediately started looking for an alternative. My path started off on logging in to my old Gmail account, and checking what they’ve done with it in the past year (last time I used it, it was still in “private” beta). As I saw they added a lot to the service, I threw Gmail into Outlook and gave it a spin. I noticed that I had to get a plugin to get calendars to synchronize, but Google didn’t make Office, so I don’t blame them.

As of now, I’ve given my global email to all contacts stating that I’ve switched my email provider to Google and gave my new address.