There can't be too many internet users who haven't heard of Hotmail. Microsoft's free web-based email system has been around for years and has its fair share of supporters and detractors.

I could have chosen any web-based email for this purpose and Hotmail aren't the only people who offer such a system - you can get one from YAHOO or Lycos, for example. In fact, the reason I chose Hotmail over anything else was the fact that it was simply the most famous - the decision (which was made over four years ago!) was not based on anything such as site features, inbox size or any other criteria you might have expected.

Wading past the optional subscriptions to various magazines and offers (you can subscribe to these if you wish and there seem to be hundreds to choose from, but don't worry you can go back and subscribe to these at a later date if you wish), eventually you are given the choice of account. Hotmail offer two types of account - free and paid. The free account (which will be discussed here) is more limited than the paid type. Obviously, Microsoft are pushing their paid services so this is the most prominent, but the smaller link at the bottom will let you sign up for free.

Depending on how you plan to use your account, the standard 2MB may not be enough, although I have found it to be more than adequate for my uses and I have never been in a situation where I've had to delete stuff to make room for incoming email. A friend of mine uses his account as his main email account and regularly has to clear it out to make room for incoming email and I believe he mentioned that if your account goes over the 2MB limit then Hotmail starts automatically deleting email from your inbox, although I think you are given a few days to do your own tidying. If not, then Hotmail deletes email for you - I believe it deletes the older stuff first.

One downside of using Hotmail is that if you get an email with a link in it, the link opens up in a Hotmail window and at times this can mean that the link doesn't work properly (e.g. links to online surveys), but there is a way around this.

One advantage that Hotmail has over other similar options is the ability to use your account through Outlook Express 5 (and later versions) which means that you can use Hotmail almost like a 'normal' ISP email account. This, handily, also cuts out the two downsides to Hotmail as I've mentioned above as you're only connecting to the email database

Pictures of hotmail.com

Hotmail

If you do start attracting spam, Hotmail does come with a handy filter which is easy to use and very effective. Addresses can be banned by name or complete server (e.g. if I get spam from jim@spamcentral.com, I can choose to block Jim solely or email from spamcentral.com totally). If Hotmail does accidentally send some proper mail to your junk mail folder, you can add addresses to a safe list to ensure that it's no longer classified as junk! I'm not sure how many 'blocked' addresses you can have - I assume it's quite a lot as I've yet to see any messages telling me I can't block further addresses (and I have blocked quite a few!) These are extremely handy features, although you can only use these if you sign into Hotmail via the web and not via Outlook Express - this goes for many of Hotmail's features.

Overall, I have no real complaints about Hotmail - as a free service, it does the job I ask of it and it keeps my private email account from being spammed. Using the service through Outlook Express is excellent and I can use more than one account at the same time without having to sign out and into several different accounts. There are other, similar web mail accounts out there and everyone has their favourites, but for me, the ability to use Outlook Express saves me loads of time and effort and for that reason alone is why I continue to use Hotmail.