Thanks for your reply, Shadow. But, also note that my question was about a social club, not a small business. I just happen to have a lot of friends (in the club) and they all appreciate getting emails from me.
I pointed out that my emails are not spam. So, telling me that these limits were made to combat spam doesn't do anything for me, or for any of the thousands of other people involved with social clubs like mine. In this day and age, with all the sophisitcated anti-smap software, you'd think that ISPs could find a more effective way to fight spam than by counting emails and thus punishing everyone else in the process.
T-4-2, yes, I know the difference between an email client and a Service Provider. I was using shorthand. When I say I am using Windows Live Mail, of course I meant the whole system that Micoroft is tryng to impose on us with Windows 7 by not providing an email client and instead forcing us all to use their web-based Hotmail.
Outlook Express was a perfectly good email client, the best. It was the only one that could handle Groups well. The only one that could easily backup all your Groups (Distribution Lists) and even synchronize Group of contacts on different computers. It was easy to import everything (your email, your contacts, and yourt groups) to a new computer.
Windows Mail (in Vista) forced us to give up on Outlook Express and have to reconstruct all our Groups of contacts manually. And there's no way to tell which person belongs to which groupsw, unless you open each of the many groups manually and look inside to see if the person is there. The person's own record doesn't tell you anything about which Groups he/she is in (as OE used to do).
Windows Live Mail took away yet another important feature: the ability to wrap text around an embedded image. (which both OE and Windows Mail) used to be able to do.
OK, Microsoft realized it's error and fixed it. After offering no text wrap in Windows Mail live 2009, they finally brought that feature back in Windows Live Mail 2011. But my brand new computer with Windows 7 came with the older 2009 version of WLM pre-installed, and no way to easily update it.
When I clicked on Update in the WLM menu, all I get is an informational page telling me to use the Windows Update from the Start menu. When I do that, all I get is a gazillion Security updates, and no mention of any WLM update. There's not even a hint that there is a newer 2011 version of WLM. I discovered there was one practically by accident. I then had to do a Google search for "Windows Live Mail 2011" to get the new version. Why does Microsoft keep it a secret that there is a newer and better version? Why do they make it so difficult to find it?
Features are being hidden behind multiple levels of screens. Some menus and commands are completely hidden until you get to a particular screen. Ye,s I understand it's contextual crap, but that only makes it more difficult to find out what features are available in the first place. Instead of just looking at the menus to find out what is possible, you have to keep clicking around and hoping that some other menus will pop up.
On top of all that, Microsoft doesn't make it easy for people to transition from Windows Mail in Vista to Windows Live Mail in Windows 7. I had to go through a lot of hoops and do a lot of research to find out how to copy all my contacts and all my older emails, and all my older folders. This is not for the average person. It requires some proficiency with Windows Explorer and Networking.
It's like Microsoft expects us to drop everything when we buy a new computer, forget about our old contacts, and start from scratch in their newfangled email system they dreamed up. And even then, this will only last until the next version of Windows, when they will scramble everything once again and force us to convert to some other new system.
Instead of building on what they already have and keeping all the useful old features, it seems Microsoft is constantly spitting on its own older products, throwing them in the trash and trying to build something new that almost always brings in some marginally useless flashy new picture capability at the expense of some useful productivity feature that simply gets dropped or forgotten.
I am currently using the Windows Mail client with Earthlink as my email server. But, I am exploring the capabilities of WLM and Hotmail, to see if its worth transitioning to it, at the risk of more disruptions with the next Windows release. I was on the verge of deciding to drop it completely when I discovered that I couldn't wrap text around pictures in Windows Live Mail 2009. It was by pure luck that I discovered there is a newer 2011 version, and I donwloaqded it in the hope that the text wrap feature would be available in it. Fortunately, it was, ... so I decided it's worth another look.
But, the relatively low limit in emails is another very big deterrent to using Hotmail. Our club already has more than 300 members. Gmail offers a limit of 500 contacts in the same email. This makes Gmail automatically much more attractive as an email solution.
Is anyone at Microsoft reading this?
