A recent revamp by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) of its Hotmail service did not appear to have gone smoothly for everyone, judging from the numerous complains on its support forum. Initiated in mid-June, the "Wave 4" upgrade for some 350 million Hotmail accounts was completed earlier in August.

Some of the problems have to do with basic functionalities, such as an inability to access or compose emails, and others are downright strange, such as errors in the "From" field of emails that were moved to another folder. At the moment, Microsoft forum representatives have advised users to avoid certain browsers. Ironically, one of their recommendations was to use the latest version of Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Chrome web browser. Another workaround was to avoid using the web-based interface, and to download the Windows Live Mail desktop client to access their Hotmail accounts instead.

It would appear to me that the various problems are real, judging from the anger and frustration from some users. It is hard to know exactly how many users were actually affected, unfortunately.

The question here is whether we should even consider the various free web-based email services to be our main mailbox in the first place--considering that there is no recourse for any service disruption or undesirable 'upgrades.' I would love to hear your opinion on this.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld 
- check out this article from ZDNet

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