Aug 10, 2001 07:57 PM
4884 Views
It was long in the waiting! Failing dot-coms, no explicit revenue models for websites, and slumping economy, I always had this feeling that this would happen. My thoughts came true when one fine day, I noticed a ad saying usa.net was going paid...and I was aghast!!! I needed this mail id desperately, as all my correspondents with very important people, and the universities in states were stored there. After much deliberation, I decided to go in for it, and yeah, I paid for their service. Their service is available for 30$ per year (works out to around 1300 Rs/- ) for year..and now it has gone up to 50$. However, after their much hyped services and money I paid for it, I don’t think that it has been really worth it!!
And that is what my review about too!
I have a hotmail account, a yahoo, usa.net, rediffmail, and indiatimes account. Of course the ones that I use normally arerediffmail, usa.net and hotmail. I will just produce a comparative analysis of hotmail and usa.net and leave the rest for you to decide whether you are ready for the paid ones or not!
Speed
Obviously, this has been the biggest drawback of hotmail in India. I have operated hotmail from other places too, and I didn’t find hotmail as slow as it is in India…for heaven knows why! On the other hand usa.net has never such problems. I have been more than satisfied by its speed. I am not expecting any website load at the click of a mouse...but usa.net doesn’t disappoint at all!
Services
This is where the real comparison starts! Now here are few features which usa.net offers when youPAY for their services.
1.desktop download: means you can now configure your outlook express to their pop server address, and download all the mails directly to your computers and see mails at will. This is certainly a very good facility…as a matter of fact...once registered and configured your mail client..you really need not see the website again!!
2.forwarding mails: allows you to configure a address to which you want to forward all your mails directly. You can also use filters to direct those mails which you want to.
3.storage upgrade: pay more, and then upgrade from 5 mb account to 10 mb account!!!
4.ad suppression: now no more ads load when you enter your inbox…nice feature actually!…really helps with the speed as well!
5.virus scan: all your documents including attachments are virus scanned before opening, and it will not allow that mail to be opened if a virus is suspected.
Now tell me friends, are these features not available in hotmail as well?!! Certainly except for one, all features and more are available for free when you use hotmail. The new look hotmail also become slick and beautiful to use! The biggest advantage which hotmail has is the messenger..once the messenger is installed, it becomes a one-stop desktop solution for emails, chats, file transfers and other things! In fact yahoo too offers much better features for the same free cost!!
On the other hand, I would have definitely taken support of usa.net paid services, had they introduced some features not found in any other sites. I would have loved to be informed of a urgent message on my mobile, if it comes on the site...like a small SMS message telling me just the subject of message and from where it is..it could be a help..(of course, the service subjected to a few countries only).They could have some feature like a grammar check, personalized settings on the looks, more amount of storage space, a automatic birthday/event wisher to your friends, and so on...I could write a mini review on some changes they could have made!!!
So friends, usa.net might be the first one to go paid, but I fail to understand whether they will be successful with the idea, simply because, the features offered at extra price are not worth it, and the same can be had at different email ids. Now only if only bill gates is taken to court for dominating the e-mail market too, that the others will succeed with this model!!!
As for me, as long as hotmail is free, I will not renew my netaddress account next year!
