If you provide a free service should you care if it works? 4

[GreenTeeth]

I have just got to a point with my hotmail account where I cannot get to my address book on account of the server being too busy. I know that it is a free service, and that it is very kind of microsoft (with a campital m I spose) to provide such a marvelous service for us, but surely if you provide a service, you are obliged to make it run smoothly.

I admit this is a bit of a selfish rant, however microsoft (with a capital m of course) have built this service up to the point that people rely on it now. I have no email else where, and even though I spent years trying to stay away from email and computers in general, it comes to a point where it is necessary.

I kind of assume though that Microsoft have some money, and if there is any company who could stay one step ahead of the game they would. You would have thought, that what with all the moaning and slating that Microsoft do get, surely now that they have the money they have isn't it time to start ironing out some of the little things that actually wind people up on a personal level.

I wonder what it is about money and that makes you care less. If the money is coming in, **** em if it doesn't work. It is a bizarre psychology.

I shall go now, and log on later yeah?

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

I don't use hotmail much, but my guess it is due to the problems MSN (who owns hotmail) is having. They aren't making money. Microsoft is going to try an make them profitable. One of the things to reduce costs, is to not add more servers.

This is just my guess...

iSeriesCodePoet
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer

Want to have all your bookmarks in one spot?

http://www.koldark.net/bookmark4u/

Make your links shorter:

http://makeashorterlink.com/

 

[Provogeek]

Hotmail has been riddled with problems since MSN started migrating the servers to their own OS. MS bought Hotmail, they didn't build it, and the core servers are Unix based (go figure). They have made some recent changes the past year merging many online services into one creating the MSN portal we see today using Passport for authentication. There are some news groups and forums you can go to to find help, but none are operated by MS and there is no place you can send e-mail to for help. There are some self help guides, but those are as usefull as an MS published Windows manual.

In my opinion, if it's free, use at your own risk. If you have problems, post in the news groups and cross your fingers as you wait for a reply. If you get no reply, go someware else. You can choose to PAY M$ to use Hotmail, and then I would expect to get full support, but why pay when the freebee is good enough, all you get is extra storage space when you pay.

It may be time you went someware else for you e-mail needs. Give Yahoo a try, they use Novell Portal Services which is NDS base. My wife has been using it for about four years now and has found it to be quit reliable and I have not heard of any security breaches like MS's Passport has.

Provogeek

Saving the world, one network at a time

 

[guestgulkan]

Hotmail sucks - You only have to look at that welcome
page to see where their real priorities lie.

If you really need email get a decent ISP - you may have to pay a few £ or $ a month.

 

[pmonett]

I think it all boils down to one phrase : never expect more than you pay.
It is unfortunate that it is like that, but MS does not have an extraordinary track record where reliability is concerned, and when I chose a mail service I ruled Hotmail out on that basis alone.
Experience proves that I was quite right to do so, since Hotmail and AOL seem to me (from afar) to be riddled with spam and privacy issues.
I hesistate to say so, but I have several accounts on two different ISPs that have a rather low international profile, and I can state for the record that spam is an issue that almost does not touch me. I do receive spam, but it is at a rythm of about one every month. I realize that many people would be overjoyed to receive so little of the stuff. I do believe, though, that many of those people stick with Hotmail and AOL - a contradiction I do not understand.
Free is not necessarily unworthy - many Open Source developers (and many others that just post programs for free, because they did something useful) are people who are dedicated to actually solving a problem and will work at it until the issue is indeed solved. Such works have the incredible properties of being well-developed, efficient and stable, yet you need not pay the developers since they gave the program (and sometimes the code) out of pure, unadulterated good will.
Yet, Hotmail (whatever it was before) is not the emanation of a group of competent people intent on providing a safe haven for all people's mail. Hotmail is a publicity stunt for Microsoft, which is a corporation of immense financial weight. Corporations never do anything without a goal, and their goal, in the end, is always money. In this respect, Microsoft is ALREADY ahead of the game, so there is no need to make things better until another gigantic corporation decides to play it rough by putting a better service in place. In which case, once that service becomes well-known in the US and abroad, Microsoft will scramble to put more money into Hotmail and, presto, you will suddenly experience spam-free, reliable and consistent service.
So, without any sarcasm (or just a little bit), I think it is true to say that the solution to Hotmails problems is to build another multi-billion dollar corporation around providing a free. stable, reliable, spam-free Internet mail service that will demonstrate the technological know-how of the people in the corporation.
Of course, the only problem is how to make billions of dollars out of a free service. I'll leave that one to the PhDs in economy out there ;-).

 

[Granvillew]

For a free Web mail service I use Myrealbox (

http://www.myrealbox.com).

This is a Novell project and they state it is free 'cos they use it for testing.

They have their problems on the rare occasion but I get excellent "value for money".

If you want a freebie for non-commercial use this may be worth a look.

 

[GreenTeeth]

Granvillew,

Looks good, though I can't sign up, as they won't accept a hotmail address, so that is out of the question for me, I shall keep a not of it though, as it likes a good one

 

[CajunCenturion]

In answer to the original question, that being a free service and it working, included with the internal comment about if the money is coming in so what, I offer the following:

It boils down to the priorities of the service provider. Among those can be

Pride in Work
Professionalism
Greed
Ego
Philanthropy
Recognition

You can tell alot about the motivation by evaluating their work in light of these, or other pertitnent character traits.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[lionelhill]

By definition, you get excelent value for money from Hotmail, because it's free. Value divided by zero equals lots....

Going back to the original question, if you operate a free service, it's presumeably because you want publicity or are testing your product, or something. Bad service is bad publicity, and if you are testing a product, you expect to improve it. In either case it makes sense for MSN to try to avoid hotmail getting toooo bad, but there's the question about how much money they really can afford to put into a publicity site...

 

[GreenTeeth]

I think that microsoft are a bit stuck now, as too many people rely on Hotmail as a service. I myself do not have a computer, and one would be interresting to have I spose, but not worth it at the moment and my job does not call for remote access. There are many people in my boat here, as I know a lot of people who just can't get on with computers, or are simply not interrested. But like me have found that life is made easier by access to some form of email. But when luxury starts to become a necesity through availability, a shift in conciousness steps in, and it becomes a god given right(in peoples minds) to have that service). Of course we know rationally that is not the case, but try living without electricity or fresh running water for a week and you will soon start to crawl up the walls.

So on that basis, where does my arguement stand. I betcha that if hotmail becomes too much of a burden, they will not be able to just stop it; or will they?

 

[Tarwn]

Of course they would be able to. It would hurt their popularity, but they would probably define "too much of a burden" as a trade off between any negatives (cost, etc) versus what it would cost them to stop offering the service.

Therefore if they believed that hotmail had become to much of a burbned, than the effct it would have on their users would already be calculated into the equation and the decision would be more like "it is to much of a burder despite what it will cost to discontinue it".

I do agree that I is highly unlikely that MS will do something like this though, with their focus on marketing Hotmail would have to be creating financial difficulties for a large portion of the company before they would seriously consider killing the service. I think selling it would be in the same boat because the case of selling it would be throwing away a great deal of marketing potential with a very large user base, which is not something they would want to do.

-Tarwn

 

[GreenTeeth]

Tarwn,

Yes, that is more what I was thinking of as oposed to the reality or rather the actuality of stopping the service, but yes, I'm sure it is just one plug socket to unplug and it would be gone.

 

[PCLine]

There is a school of thought that "you get what you pay for" or "beggers can't be choosers".

It is possible that there is an element of truth in such statements, but all too often such statements are utilised to hide or disguise blatant inadequacies in products or services.

Are microsoft attempting to address the problems with the product ~ probably. But that is based on my opinion that microsoft has two main divisions;

Arsonists: The people who produce highly flammable products.

Firefighters: The people who attempt to minimise the damage from the fires caused by their products.

CajunCenturion highlighted several examples of character traits that might influence the quality of the product or service provided. But ultimately, regardless of the culture of the organisation or the motivation of the individuals within that organisation, the organisation has an obligation (ethical and/or moral buy perhaps not legal) to ensure to the best of their ability that the product they offer is fit for the intended use.

It does not matter that they promote disclaimers etc. because disclaimers have now become part of the culture of modern western societies to such a point that people regard them as "legal watchwords" just incase something goes wrong. Disclaimers are not viewed as indicative of the instability of the product.

All the best.

 

[Tarwn]

I don't know when this turned into a hotmail post, but here's my attempt to rerail the train

I think a free service or product should supply what it says it will, without comparison to similar services or products that have a pricetag attached.

While many free services/products are similar to existing for-sale services or products, I don't thin we can compare the free one to the expensive one in terms of whether one is better than the other functionally. It may be worse, it may be better, either way the comparison should instead be "Does it do what it says it does".

If the product, free ot not, does not do what it advertises it does (such as a free service advertising it works and it doesn't) than I think we have found the unethical case.

Now, inherent in the question of the product working is the question "Does it work the way I think it should?" It may be that the product or service is badly described or that upon first getting the product or service your expectations lead you to believe ithat the product is not doing everything that it is supposed to. That is another issue, centering around a mixture of the companies ability to describe their product, the end users connotation of that description, and the ever-present factor of assumption.

If I said I had created a free office document creator that allows you to create new documents, edit old documents, and in effect do everything that Microsoft Word (or the Star Office variant, doesn't matter) does, except allow you the use of the "W" key and my product did in fact allow you to do everything it said, people still wouldn't use it. In fact I would be willing to bet that people would take mny lack of allowance of the "W" key as a failure in the software and would say the software doesn't work because of the lack of ability to use the "W" key. In reality (well, as far as the example is concerned) I am part of a secret cult that believes that the "W" key is the "Source of all the _orlds ills" and can't understand why people think my software doesn't work when it does exactly what I expect it to and what it is described to do.

-Tar_n

_{01010100 01101001 01100101 01110010 01101110 01101111 01101011 00101110 01100011 01101111 01101101}
^{29 3K 10 3D 3L 3J 3K 10 32 35 10 3E 39 33 35 10 3K 3F 10 38 31 3M 35 10 36 3I 35 35 10 3K 39 3D 35 10 1Q 19}
Get better results for your questions: faq333-2924
Frequently Asked ASP Questions: faq333-3048

 

[petermeachem]

On the contrary, there is a great deal of truth in 'you get what you pay for'. Compare and contrast a Trabant and a BMW, or any other product pair. It depends a great deal on how and how often you use the product. I have a £30 Black and Decker drill which is fine cos I don't use it that often. If I were a plumber and used a drill all the time I'd get a £200 one.
It's ridiculous to complain about hotmail not being good enough for you. You aren't forced to join and it costs nothing. I can't think of a single reason why MS have any obligation at all to do anything at all with it.

Greenteeth, 'try living without electricity or fresh running water for a week and you will soon start to crawl up the walls'. I hope not. Next week I'm going off to Portugal to buy a house, no electricity and a well!

http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk

http://www.robotwisdom.com/

 

[PCLine]

Tarwn (Programmer) May 21, 2003
I don't know when this turned into a hotmail post, but here's my attempt to rerail the train


Please see the first post;
GreenTeeth (MIS) May 14, 2003
I have just got to a point with my hotmail account where I cannot get to my address book on account of the server being too busy.

Perhaps it was my desire to "stay away" ;-) from analogies that prompted me to choose that product as my focus

Think about the freebies from computer mags and their "short comings" and readers "expectations".

All the best.

 

[petermeachem]

Oh right.

If it's free and it works, use it. If it doesn't work, don't be surprised and either buy something that does, or go without. I suspect the problem is that some people babble on about 'software should be free'. No-body ever says 'food should be free', or satellite telly. So perhaps some people have a strange notion that something that is either free or very cheap should work perfectly and do all they want it to.

http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk

http://www.robotwisdom.com/

 

[PCLine]

So petermeachem you wouldn't be one of those people that believes that saying about "your paying for the name" (SONY, MicroSoft, Iomega, Hewlett Packard etc.). And you would be able to adequately explain away the differentials in pricing structures for essentially the same products eg. CD/RW disks, hard drives etc. and you would be able to address issues such as "economies of scale" in relation to pricing issues and still come up with the same response that there is " a great deal..." rather than my "an element..." of truth.

As to reasons why MS should do something about the problem with there product;

1. They "promised" the public free e-mail that is in competition with other free and pay for versions. If they are not competing why do you suppose they are offering it?

2. People have subscribed to a service that they are using for correspondence and find that they cannot access the mails that are being sent to them and that is down to MS and no one else.

There are "other reasons" but those two are good enough to be going on with ;-)

All the best.

 

[PCLine]

"No-body ever says 'food should be free', or satellite telly."

Unfortunately, this isn't the forum to talk politics.

All the best.

 

[petermeachem]

I was just pointing out that for some reason some people seem to think that software should be free. What is political about a satellite telly?

I haven't the slightest idea what you mean by the first para in your previous message. I don't recall mentioning paying for a known name. No I can't explain why apparently similar things vary widely in price. Neither can you.
We recently bought the cheapest hoover from the shop down the road. Works fine and saves £200 over a Dyson.

Pricing is incredibly complex, alot more than 'economies of scale'. For instance, I'm off to Portugal for a week. The ticket home on the 1st June is £300, on the second £45. Same airline, same plane. The difference is that children are back to school on the 2nd.

All I meant was that if a bit of shareware or a freebie off a cover disc works then fine. If it doesn't, then tough.

To answer your questions.

1. No idea. I have a hotmail account for occasional use. Seems to do the job for me. I wouldn't be dumb enough to make my life dependent on it.
2. Tough luck, try someone else.

You seem to be banging on about hotmail again after telling us not to!

http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk

http://www.robotwisdom.com/