Dan Lester wrote:

>What I do not understand is the appeal of hotmail accounts as opposed to
>"real accounts".  If someone has an ISP, they have email in all cases I've
>ever heard of.  If they're students with campus web access they have
>email.
> I suppose it might appeal to those who use public web stations in coffee
>houses, libraries, etc, but that quickly can get expensive if you're
>buying
>by the quarter hour.  And, in most libraries that I know of (including the
>one where I manage Internet services) email access is blocked on the
>browser.   Or is it that they're reading it via a webpage, thus avoiding
>the mail client in the browser?  (I'd love to be able to block web servers
>that have included chat pages....since that isn't allowed in our place due
>to lack of public web stations...leaving librarians to enforce it)

Hotmail is exclusively reading e-mail through a web page.  It also has the
added benefit of instant translation of binary files recieved on accounts
there, or ability to download those files if you are not on an adequate
browser.  BVeing as I can not recieve binary files at my main address,
[log in to unmask], without them becoming impossible to download and
translate because of the strangef mail headers which get attached to my
mail there and because the e-mail suystem is totally inadequate for
downloading files effectively anyway, hotm,ail is simply a better choice
for those purposes.  I wouldn't use hotmail for anything else though as
password security is a big issue for me and to get into hotmail, or
geocities or many other free e-mail providers, you fill out a form which
contains the password attribute hiding the password from your screen but
sending it over the web in straight text format with no encryption.  It is
the same with geocities as well.  Both use the web as their gateway to
e-mail.

Glenn