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Strategies & Market Trends : Paint The Table -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (890)	11/5/2001 6:19:32 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23786

Speaking of the Softie, has anybody else noticed the way they are trying to drive usage of Hotmail toward a paid subscription model? First, they have kept the "free" limit at 2 MB, which with pictures and jokes and junk mail floating around, means you have to be really aggessive about cleaning it out or they will start deleting stuff. Then, they offered to sell you a 10MB limit for 12.95 a year. Now this message appeared in my inbox: Hotmail Policy Change Sign-in required every 30 days To keep your Hotmail account active be sure to sign-in at least once every 30 days. Accounts reaching 30 days of inactivity are formally deactivated and all messages, folders, and contacts are permanently deleted. Within 90 days of deactivation an account may be reactivated simply by signing-in. Remember, sign-in to your Hotmail account at least once every 30 days! Hotmail Extra Storage Never get deactivated! The 30-day deactivation policy doesn't apply to MSN Hotmail Extra Storage accounts. In addition, you get 10 MB of storage – that’s 5 times what you have today. For $12.95 per year, Hotmail Extra Storage gives you: 10 MB of storage for saving e-mail messages, photos, and attachments. The ability to send and receive larger attachments (up to 1.5 MB) . The freedom to sign-in whenever you need to and never risk losing your Hotmail account information or e-mail name. They permanently delete everything if you happen to not get around to signing in for a month. Unless, of course, you pay the 12.95 per year. Free email may be migrating toward a model where it is always free, but the free service is almost unusable, and only for a modest fee can you get something useful. The company this may help the most in the long run is probably YHOO. They give away 6 MB on their "free" email, and I think they sell larger mailboxes. But if the competition is selling anything above 2 MB and deleting stuff for people who aren't diligent, YHOO will have more freedom to gain revenue from something other than ads. Just some idle ramblings.....