"Effortless email and calendar" is what it says on the screen when I type in hotmail.com. I've never succeeded in getting to the site being described there and I would like to know how. Instead, over the past several months, once I sign in, I get sent to this very frustrating and confusing site that is almost impossible to use, with the url "outlook live com owa" (pretend there are periods in the spaces). Yes, I know it's not hotmail any more. And yet I have had an address ending in hotmail.com since I got my first email address in 2001. Actually, there is a simpler to use site that I can get to by typing in hotmail.com, but it was only at this one library, and I had to use Internet Explorer (but they upgraded and that simple to use site was lost). That's not really a problem, but at every other library, even Internet Explorer sends me to the other frustrating site.So what is wrong with hotmail? Pretty much everything. At least a couple of months ago I could still see a simple list of emails I received recently. With Internet Explorer at the one library, I still can. I can even respond to emails there, many of which I send to myself, and the replies are plain text. Years ago I got in the habit of sending myself large amounts of text to print out using hotmail. Some of the other services would put a lot of blank space on the right. That wastes paper and money. But I eventually found I couldn't use plain text and had to convert everything to plain text first. If I ever forgot, disaster. Now, of course, replying is not a simple matter if I can't access that simple to use site. And in addition to having to figure out where "reply" is (it's not a word, and I had to remember how Gmail does it), I have to find the email itself. You see, there are no longer "emails". There are "conversations". So the email is not there when I click. It is "somewhere" in a long list of them. Not a list of where to click to find an email. In a long list consisting of the entire very long text. And don't think that will get any easier later. Once I reply, the very long email I sent myself is right there and I have to scroll through it to find what I replied to. Oh, and what I replied to, regardless of how long it is, is also there. If I'm at any other library other than the one where things work, that can make the computer freeze. Which is also likely if I forget to change what I am copying to plain text.So why continue to deal with all this? I'm starting to wonder.
