Microsoft e-mail upgrade glitchy for some

Some of the beta testers for Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail service are getting an increase in storage, but the extra capacity isn't being introduced as smoothly as some of them might hope.

The users will see from their storage meter that they now have 4 G-bytes of storage, up from 2 G-bytes before. But the extra storage might not actually have been assigned to their accounts yet, according to a company blog posting.

"This seems like putting the cart before the horse," the posting says. "The reason for this is that the storage upgrade is being gradually rolled across the universe and does not immediately change every account at the same time."

The problem should resolve itself as the upgrade continues over the next two weeks, Microsoft said. The expanded storage is only for "Hotmail Plus" customers who are beta testing Windows Live Hotmail, a revamped version of the company's Web e-mail service.

Hotmail Plus customers pay $19.95 per year for a 2G-byte account and extras such as the ability to send 20M-byte attachments.

Microsoft's free Hotmail service offers 1G-byte of storage and a 10M-byte attachment limit. By comparison, Google's Gmail offers 2.6G-bytes of storage for free and Yahoo's free e-mail includes 1G-byte of storage.

Last month, Microsoft rolled out another feature upgrade, M10, for the Windows Live Hotmail beta, which is supposed to improve its speed and reliability.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.