Average Jane Struggles with Hotmail

Has anyone else noticed how broken Hotmail is lately?  I think they may have just given up in the battle against Yahoo and Gmail.

Every time I log into my Hotmail account, it starts with a lovely purple error message that the page I’m trying to reach is no longer available or doesn’t exist.  It’s only fooling, though, because my account page appears as soon as the message disappears.

I pay for the premium Hotmail service so I can check my mail from my POP accounts.  There’s a setting that specifically says "Download new messages only," but that feature stopped working several months ago.  That means every time I check my POP messages, it pulls all of them down again.  If it’s been a couple of days since I dumped my e-mail to Outlook at home, I can end up with so many repeat messages that it’s no longer practical to keep wading through all of them just to see what’s new.  Did I mention it rearranges the messages fairly randomly, too?

I’m perfectly satisfied with the Yahoo account I use for Average Jane and the Gmail accounts I use for various other purposes (although Gmail takes a little getting used to).  I think it may be time to kick Hotmail to the curb and save $19.95 per year plus a whole lot of aggravation.