Hotmail's response to Gmail..or something

Tue Jul 13, 2004 5:08 am

I wonder is you can still get hold of Gmail invites, I reckon it would be really cool to get one from somewhere.

Tue Jul 13, 2004 6:24 am

FrankieG wrote:I think hotmail is eventually going to start dwindling down because of all the email upgrades the different places are having. They can't compete with google or yahoo, and they only did this because it was a last option.

Actualy that's not really true.

Leaving G-mail aside (I have an account to use for large file attachments since I tend to fill up my college server space, but I find the degree of survalience too creepy for daily corrospondance)

Hotmail is offering more space than yahoo, and throwing in virus scanning which is something that MS has been pushing lately. Perhaps I'm biased as someone who uses hotmail but the improvements offered by Microsoft surpass those offered by Yahoo.

Also hellyer, and the others who were asking about g-mail invites, you get them from having a g-mail account. The accounts have been generating a lot of invites lately so it shouldn't be that hard to catch ahold of one.

Tue Jul 13, 2004 6:59 am

How do you become a member? Theres no info on the actually gmail website as far as I can see, but I'm probably missing something really obvious.

Tue Jul 13, 2004 7:15 am

hellyer wrote:How do you become a member? Theres no info on the actually gmail website as far as I can see, but I'm probably missing something really obvious.

At the moment since Gmail is in beta testing they want to control the number of users who can access the system. So people who already have accounts are occasionaly given the ability to invite other users into the service. For example I recieved about 5 invitations 2 weeks ago and handed them out at work. Haven't gotten any since. Guess I should keep PPT in mind if I get more.

It's similar to how they're running the tests for Okruat

*edit*
To be even more clear. You can't get an account yet unless someone invites you

Tue Jul 13, 2004 7:37 am

Yeah thats what I thought. Thanks for your help anyway. If you happen to receive any other invites keep me in mind 0:)

.

Thu Jul 15, 2004 2:49 pm

My mom uses Hotmail tons and hates the spam (so she uses the ultra-secure option), so this might make her emailing less painful! As for me, I use Yahoo and might switch to Gmail if I need to get a new email address, since I think every spam company already has mine.

It's very interesting how these companies feel threatened. Personally, I think some people are willing to stick with the 100MB or 250MB provided by Yahoo/hotmail due to the surveillance of Gmail or simply by not willing to get a new account and have to tell everyone.

Thu Jul 15, 2004 6:18 pm

Yahoo's 100 MB < Hotmail's 250 MB < Google's 1GB with targeted ads.

Personally, I like my Yahoo account -- it allows me to use POP3, and doesn't display ads when I visit webmail.

http://gmail-is-too-creepy.com/ is weird. I wouldn't even call them a reliable source of information, as everything on there has the anti-gmail tint (rather than giving a blanced view).

Sun Jul 18, 2004 8:09 pm

I have AOL right now, I only use them for email because I'm used to it and that's the address everyone knows. I've used Hotmail too, but I don't think they are going to be able to keep up with Gmail.

Anyone have an invite they could send me to Gmail? And for that matter, should we set up a thread where Gmail-using PPTers can give each other invites, like we did for LJ before they started letting users make accounts without invites?