So after years with my Hotmail account I got fed up with the copious amounts of spam and the ridiculous volume of smut banner ads. I have officially closed my Hotmail account never to be opened again. Enter Gmail.

Months ago Berger sent me an invite to Gmail, Google’s version of free, web-based email. It took a little getting used to, but I can proudly say, it’s the only free, web-based email address I’ll ever need.

If you have a Hotmail account and you want to save your old emails to your computer, follow these steps…

1. Download and install Mozilla Thunderbird or Outlook Express
2. Download and install WebMail Retriever for Hotmail
3. Verify that your account can be logged into using Retriever
4. In Thunderbird or Outlook, setup a new email account on your computer, using the instructions in the Retriever program
5. Login to your Hotmail account and mark any email messages you want to download as “Unread”, then move them to your Inbox if they’re in other folders
6. Use your email client on your computer (Thunderbird or Outlook) and “Get Mail/Sync”
7. Your email client will then download all the emails you marked as “Unread” and sent to your Inbox.

No need to “FW:” tons of email. Just repeat steps 5-7 to grab all your email.

(Breaths a sigh of relief)
Finally, no more Hotmail.

• Past Writings