Hotmail goes belly up; "does a Gmail"

Hotmail is the most recent in the belly-flops of email services when it suddenly went down without warning earlier on today.

Hotmail accounts are organised into bays - it's not clear as of yet which bays are affected, although both my accounts are working fine (I'm on Hotmail Plus, so a dedicated bay and no advertisements) whereas my housemate, Nikki, is seriously struggling to use hers.

As always, the LiveSide lads have picked it up, but officially from the Windows Live Hotmail blog:

"We are aware that some of you may be experiencing difficulty accessing your Windows Live Hotmail accounts. We’re actively investigating the cause and are working to fix this as quickly as possible. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and disruption this may be causing you."

Why is Hotmail so popular with students? An awful lot of students use Windows Live Messenger to communicate with others on the cheap - it's free, instant and easy, considering almost everyone has a Windows Live ID, it just makes sense.

Instead of using their university email, you'll often find that people use their Hotmail to send and receive attachments, but also have most of their subscribed services sent there.

Another failure, another dollar. When will the madness end? Well, around half an hour ago when it all kick-started, but there's no excuse, is there really?

You can read my previous post on Gmail going down here.