I signed up to hotmail before I even really understood what email was. I was just excited that I could get to use my own name! And I’ve pretty much used that account ever since – it’s a sort of time capsule of my life in correspondence since the late nineties. Sometimes I trawl back through old emails and have a laugh, or cringe, at what I wrote and who I was writing to.
My love affair with hotmail, however, is slowly dying. And it’s for two main reasons. Firstly, I get so much junk mail I have had to set my filter to the highest level, which means I periodically miss important emails that I should be reading. Unfortunately, I learnt a little too late that entering your email address into the world wide web in order to win competitions and prizes doesn’t necessarily come without a price tag. Secondly – and, I didn’t realise it until fairly recently – hotmail has decided to add a signature to each of my sent emails, with a one-line advertisement. Not too big of a deal when emailing friends, but pretty frustrating when you’re emailing your CV to a potential employer.
So I’ve started an affair with gmail. It’s less attractive than hotmail; the interface is strange, and the way it lists emails is confusing, but I’m getting used to it. There aren’t any interactive banner ads, which is great, and the emails seem to be arriving at their intended destination, but I’m still unsatisfied and sometimes I ditch them both to spend an evening with Facebook.
I’m always on the lookout for a better model so let me know if you have any suggestions?
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