The problems you are describing go back further than last year. More like 2 to 3 years ago.
Bell Canada operates an Internet service called Sympatico. A couple of years ago they teamed up with Microsoft and are doing some co-branding. The Sympatico email accounts are now hosted on a server that uses the Hotmail system. You can log into it through your browser and it looks exactly like Hotmail, however Sympatico is the logo they use of course. You can also set up your email client if you prefer using it. The SMTP server is called smtphm.sympatico.ca. (the "hm" is for Hotmail). I found out that if you send email to a Hotmail account through this SMTP server, your email will almost never arrive. This is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. I haven't tried it from the Webmail interface yet. Nevertheless, this is basically a complete stupidity. I kept sending emails to people and they never received them. I was also using a non "sympatico.ca" email address as the sender. Perhaps if I had used the email address it might have worked. I guess their stupid SmartScreen technology flagged my emails as spam. I then found out that Bell Canada was still using their former SMTP server smtp1.sympatico.ca, so I switched to that and now approximately half of the emails arrive in Hotmail accounts. Still not great of course.
The other stupidity with Hotmail is that you cannot send people most types of attachments (especially EXE files). The attachment arrives and is displayed, but it's greyed out and you cannot open or download it. You can't even open something as simple as JPG's much of the time.
I tell people to use Yahoo instead, because Yahoo accepts all attachments and the email almost always arrive. Their spam filter seems to work better! I've been told that even the Gmail spam filter works better than Hotmail.
You know, the bottom line is that Microsoft is a crappy software company and almost anything they touch or do has enormous problems. When Hotmail was stilled owned by the original founders it functioned much better. I used to have an account and it was a real pleasure to use. It was even possible to use a 3rd-party software to download emails into your email client. Since Microsoft took over it's become another crappy, bug-infested behemoth like their operating systems and other products.
Problem goes back longer than last year....
The problems you are describing go back further than last year. More like 2 to 3 years ago.
Bell Canada operates an Internet service called Sympatico. A couple of years ago they teamed up with Microsoft and are doing some co-branding. The Sympatico email accounts are now hosted on a server that uses the Hotmail system. You can log into it through your browser and it looks exactly like Hotmail, however Sympatico is the logo they use of course. You can also set up your email client if you prefer using it. The SMTP server is called smtphm.sympatico.ca. (the "hm" is for Hotmail). I found out that if you send email to a Hotmail account through this SMTP server, your email will almost never arrive. This is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. I haven't tried it from the Webmail interface yet. Nevertheless, this is basically a complete stupidity. I kept sending emails to people and they never received them. I was also using a non "sympatico.ca" email address as the sender. Perhaps if I had used the email address it might have worked. I guess their stupid SmartScreen technology flagged my emails as spam. I then found out that Bell Canada was still using their former SMTP server smtp1.sympatico.ca, so I switched to that and now approximately half of the emails arrive in Hotmail accounts. Still not great of course.
The other stupidity with Hotmail is that you cannot send people most types of attachments (especially EXE files). The attachment arrives and is displayed, but it's greyed out and you cannot open or download it. You can't even open something as simple as JPG's much of the time.
I tell people to use Yahoo instead, because Yahoo accepts all attachments and the email almost always arrive. Their spam filter seems to work better! I've been told that even the Gmail spam filter works better than Hotmail.
You know, the bottom line is that Microsoft is a crappy software company and almost anything they touch or do has enormous problems. When Hotmail was stilled owned by the original founders it functioned much better. I used to have an account and it was a real pleasure to use. It was even possible to use a 3rd-party software to download emails into your email client. Since Microsoft took over it's become another crappy, bug-infested behemoth like their operating systems and other products.