Microsoft Is Getting Ready to Push Hotmail Users to Outlook.com

How bad is this -- I have never seen an outlook.com email address
I have had an hotmail address for more than 10 years WHY do you think I want to change that -- how many places do you think I have used it -- so you think just forwarding the mail is the solution ? Not so, you have just made this very painful and time consuming.
Yes I get this is the inevitable BUT I heard about it through How-To Geek -- don't you think as a loyal customer it should have been through Hotmail first?
Yes the page is clean looking BUT I have always hated Outlook and only used it when a client insisted. Hotmail always suited my needs so much more.
And IF you start charging for this I am gone. I already use the Microsft OS, Office Suites and many other products AND I am in a position to recommend products and not only recommend Microsoft software I push people to stick with your company across the board. This feels like the known arrogance of Microsoft and I am very disappointed and seriously reconsidering my loyalty.
Remember gmail may not be hotmail but it is usable.

I have a LIVE.COM account (that's still hotmail.com), and I received notification, via that email, that Microsoft wanted me to move to OUTLOOK.COM last week.

The only problem with that is that I had already added my OUTLOOK.COM email address to my LIVE.COM as an alias. Now it won't let me log in with that specific OUTLOOK.COM address (because it already exists). Very confusing.

Outlook and Outlook.com are two completely different animals. You do know that, don't you?

I just love it when the uninformed get their hackles up over nothing. Our college has used outlook.com for a while now. I can use the same web interface for both my campus account and my Hotmail account. Granted, Hotmail's reputation is such that I wouldn't dream of using that address for professional correspondence. I strongly suggest the prophets of doom and gloom give outlook.com a test drive before wailing and moaning.

I access my accounts via POP3 or IMAP most of the time, rarely stooping to waste time and compromise security with the web-based interfaces. If I had to pick a web-based interface, I'd stick with Gmail... But Outlook is getting better. A whole lot better.

Perhaps Microsoft erred in recycling the Outlook name. It seems to be easily confused with Outhouse Express and Outhouse e-mail clients. Let's forget for a moment that it uses a similar moniker. Try to think of it as "Hotmail 2.0: Professional Edition." In that respect, it's definitely a step in the right direction.

I use both. As I said... As a web interface, I prefer Gmail. Using a real e-mail program for POP3/IMAP access (or from my iPhone), i can't tell the difference. It is a vast improvement over the old Hotmail drivel.

And yes, if your Hotmail e-mail address is what you choose to use as your Microsoft ID, then you can keep your Hotmail address. I can't imagine why anyone would want to keep a Hotmail address... But there ya' go. ;)

My thought exactly!!

I'm not sure how outlook.com works but I use my Hotmail for registering things and such so that all the junk mail goes to it. I guess I can use outlook.com for the same purpose. I use Outlook for my regular emails but don't use any of those emails for registering or for login purposes because I don't want my regular emails filled with spam.

Your Hotmail address will still work with Outlook.

I've tried Outlook several times and it still will not display full pages on many e-mails as well as hotmail. I find it a kludge of operations that are not integrated as well as hotmail. Fortunately, there is time to start moving my contacts before M$ forces me into a change.

I miss my Hotmail. I preferred the simplicity of it and I don't appreciate that my hotmail was subsumed without my permission by Outlook. Outlook is too complex for my computer's capability and so slows it down immensely, pops annoying ads that obscure my interaction with my email and constantly confuses me along with my computer.

@disgruntled,

Clearly you have NEVER used Outlook.com. Compared to the old Hotmail, OUTLOOK.COM is a million times better.

The antispam reporting is better, the ability to mass delete specific email is better, integration with SkyDrive better, etc, etc, etc....

Perhaps you work for Google!

@EasyStreet

It's nowhere near better, yet. Sure there are nice technical improvements and maybe if they had kept it under the hood instead of switching the backend servers and domains there wouldn't be as many issues (like missing emails, documents, etc). But the reliability issues are there Hotmail users didn't previously have; and they're already forcing automatic upgrades to Outlook.com even with these major issues. Then there's the mobiles apps, suppose to be the same but clearly not. The Outlook.com app has issues Hotmail app didn't. All in all a fail. They shouldn't be automatically upgrading anyone with even 1 major reliability issue let alone multiple. And personally I think the web UI (and anything Metro looking for that matter) is horrible. It looks like 1st grader designed it with the basic colors & fonts. They gutted themes and anything else that made it slightly customizable. Fail. I use a modern PC not a 486dx2; the UI is a complete step backwards but that's just my opinion. And there's also the whole bragging about getting Gmail users. Yeah, right. If anything this Hotmail users might be going to Gmail if they don't address the issues soon as I've been auto-upgraded and can't go back to Hotmail anymore. At least Google keeps their technical improvements, wherever possible, under the hood and doesn't rebrand/redesign everything every other year.

When I log on all I get now are the emails in my inbox and the options to delete / file an existing message or compose a new one. Where's all the functionality I keep reading about?

Well you know what I am totally pi**ed at Microsoft at the moment. For a couple of weeks now I have seen the advert on my Hotmail page about upgrading to Outlook.com but I was happy with Hotmail so didn't upgrade. Little did I know at the time was it was mandatory to do so otherwise your Hotmail account would be blocked which is what has happened to me. I have been on the phone to tech support at Microsoft about getting my Hotmail unblocked but am told it can't be because I didn't upgrade to Outlook.com. Only the people that upgraded can be unblocked and have access to their Hotmail account? :(

First of all, click on the settings icon in the top-right of the screen and then More mail settings, Then, click on the Email forwarding link (under the Managing your account section, Choose the Forward your mail to another email account option, and enter your Gmail address in the Where do you want your messages to be sent? textbox.

My hotmail wont let me sign in at all because its all trying to change to outlook how do i get into my hotmail now..?

Recently my hotmail account has automatically changed to outlook and has caused a big problem for me as i am no longer able to actually access my emails any more unlike my hotmail account, this is not great for me as i use hotmail on a daily basis and means that it is going to be either very difficult to write or reply to an emails of any recipients.
With Outlook itself i haven't really used it before so i can't really say much however interperting outlook so far i would definately say that the whole presentation and layout looks good. As soon as this is resolved i might reconsider my thoughts on outlook but so far i really don't know.

I hate the new Outlook.com. I didn't choose to change from Hotmail. I cannot forward emails I receive to several friends as I have enjoyed doing. Is this purposeful? I can forward to ONLY ONE other email after setting it up in advance. SO DISAPPOINTING.