Microsoft Launches "Office Outlook Live" Hotmail Integration

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/jan05/01-20OutlookLive2005PR.asp">http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/jan05/01-20OutlookLive2005PR.asp</a><br /><br /><i>"Outlook Live connects MSN Hotmail, the world's largest free Web-based e-mail service with 187 million accounts worldwide, with the advanced e-mail tools of Microsoft Office Outlook, providing customers with a way to more efficiently manage their lives. This is the first Microsoft Office product to be made available as a downloadable subscription service. With Outlook Live, customers can now view and manage all their personal information -- e-mail accounts, contacts and calendars -- in one convenient place, from virtually anywhere."</i><br /><br />You will get Outlook 2003 for your $44.95 introductory annual price. The price jumps to $59.95 on April 19, 2005. Outlook 2003 makes a fantastic email client and worth the upgrade price alone. If you already have a hotmail account, this price may be a better deal than an Outlook upgrade and you get Hotmail integration to boot.

[marcm]

You will get Outlook 2003 for your $44.95 introductory annual price. The price jumps to $59.95 on April 1, 2005.
8O
I think I'll stick to Gmail... :D It seems to me that they're trying to lure people in with Outlook 2003, but with Gmail there (OH YEAH 1GB for free!!!), I'm OK with sticking to Outlook XP.

[ragintajin]

You will get Outlook 2003 for your $44.95 introductory annual price. The price jumps to $59.95 on April 1, 2005.
I think you made a typo...it lasts til April 19th, 2005, not the 1st.

[PDANEWBIE]

If they dropped the price and took away the copy of outlook 2003 I might think about it. I can see this funcationality being worth paying for for like 10 bucks for syncing purposes. I know most of it will be the cost of overhead but for us "techies" that only need a bit of info and the switch flipped to allow us to use it 44.95 is a bit steep.

[beq]

I saw this before too. Honestly, I'm not sure how attractive the Outlook-as-a-subscription model will be to Pocket PC users, who would already have a copy of the latest Outlook bundled with their PPC :)

The Hotmail integration of Outlook Live seems identical to the Outlook Connector feature that's exclusive to the $10/month MSN Premium subscription. Too bad there's no such integration offered as a low-cost stand-alone service for users who already have Outlook...

At $60 annually for Outlook Llive, some users may be tempted to jump to a full hosted Exchange subscription (which also provides free copy of Outlook).

Granted, most Exchange hosting providers today seem to start at $120/year for 100-200MB mailbox storage (less than the 2GB Hotmail storage provided with Outlook Live). But 1and1's Exchange hosting for example is priced at $84/year and gives 1GB storage (and additionally provides Server ActiveSync, etc). Also most Exchange subscriptions seem to allow you to pay monthly or quarterly, rather than upfront annually...

[threedaysdwn]

Basically this is a hosted Exchange server... Hotmail now runs on Exchange 2003, and you get full sync'ing capabilities for E-mail, Calendar, and Contacts. And I've heard that more features may be added later in the year.

I've been using the Outlook Connector for a while now as part of my (currently free) MSN Premium subscription. In fact, it's the only reason I still have the subscription, and I had thought that I'd probably keep paying for it just for the Outlook Connector - unless I eventually end up with my own Exchange server for my business.

For now, I'm planning to switch to Outlook Live after my free MSN Premium subscription expires (not even sure when that is).

[beq]

Basically this is a hosted Exchange server... Hotmail now runs on Exchange 2003, and you get full sync'ing capabilities for E-mail, Calendar, and Contacts.
Hmm, where did you get this info I'm curious, as I wouldn't think that to be true? Realistically while Exchange 2003 may be good for corporations, it wouldn't be a good fit at all as the backend for Hotmail IMHO 8O For one thing all the business groupware capabilities are wasted, and for basic mail functions I would think there are better mailstores and MTAs that can scale better for Hotmail (even with clustering, it would be unwieldy to rely on Exchange servers for Hotmail's hundreds of millions of users)?

[cybrwulf]

You know, if they are using a hosted Exchange server, it sure would be nice if we could remotely sync with our Pocket PC's to it.

[ctmagnus]

Honestly, I'm not sure how attractive the Outlook-as-a-subscription model will be to Pocket PC users, who would already have a copy of the latest Outlook bundled with their PPC :)

Correction: the latest-minus-one version ;)

For many people, having the latest and greatest (even though those two don't always go together) makes all the difference in the world to them.

[welovejesus]

It would be preferable to dispense with dependence on the desktop version of Outlook altogether. Pocket Informant is actually more user friendly and efficient (at least to me). The only real advantages seem to be with sharing calendars to schedule appointments. It would be sweet to have a affordable subscripture service for outlook on the PPC with enterprise functionality such as calendar sharing!
Pocket Informant + affordable enterprise functionality directly from the PPC = :ppclove:

[beq]

Honestly, I'm not sure how attractive the Outlook-as-a-subscription model will be to Pocket PC users, who would already have a copy of the latest Outlook bundled with their PPC :)

Correction: the latest-minus-one version ;)
I stand corrected, thanks for the info :) I'd just assumed current PPCs being sold would in general bundle whatever is the current version of Outlook at that time (not purposely a generation behind)...

About Exchange hosting: we're still using 1and1, but they really need to beef up the Public Folders support and add GAL support (though these aren't usually relevant to personal users). The biggest obstacle though is probably that they only support the RPC-over-HTTP connectivity method, and as a result requires Windows XP (and Outlook 2003 that they provide). Windows 2000 won't work at all for example.

Whereas most of the other providers readily support VPN and direct port-135 RPC connectivity methods as well to support older Windows (and Outlook) versions...

[Darius Wey]

You will get Outlook 2003 for your $44.95 introductory annual price. The price jumps to $59.95 on April 1, 2005.
I think you made a typo...it lasts til April 19th, 2005, not the 1st.

Thanks. I'll correct this. Ed's probably sleeping right now. :)

[Ed Hansberry]

Basically this is a hosted Exchange server... Hotmail now runs on Exchange 2003, and you get full sync'ing capabilities for E-mail, Calendar, and Contacts. And I've heard that more features may be added later in the year.
I very seriously doubt this. Hotmail was still running on Unix as late as 2001. Do you have any links that shows it is actually running on Exchange? http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/case/hotmail/default.mspx makes no mention that Exchange was even part of the plan when Hotmail was migrated to Windows 2000.

[Deus]

I kow I am missing something here. I already have outlook pulling down my hotmail. What else does this integration really provide?

[karinatwork]

I can't see the introductory price mentioned anywhere on their website... plus, I am wondering, is Outlook 2003 subscription only, that means, when I get tired of it and want to cancel the subscription, does that mean Outlook 2003 won't start up again?

I wonder if anyone could give me some clarifications. I would be tempted to try it out, but only if I can keep the copy of Outlook 2003... otherwise: long live Gmail! ;)

K.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Do they still have the limit of 1 Hotmail account in Outlook?

[Sunnyone]

Can't speak for Outlook 2003, but I currently have 3 hotmail accounts in Outlook XP.

[beq]

If you guys are referring to free Hotmail/MSN email accounts, it's probably wise to move away from the HTTPMail protocol access (which has been used in lieue of POP/IMAP).

Microsoft will supposedly drop it altogether for existing accounts by 1Q2005 (last I heard). That means no more access via Outlook, OE, and other supporting clients.