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Hotmail Suffers Storage Gaffe
Monday, July 26, 2004
Members that signed up for Microsoft's free version of Hotmail
last Wednesday (7-21-04) were treated to an unexpected gift. Upon
completion of their registration, some new members were rewarded
with 2 gigabytes of storage, the upgraded amount reserved for paid
members.
Although MSN has stated that members of Hotmail's free service
would be receiving storage increases, 2 gigs is a little more than
what was expected or announced. The reported increase for unpaid
members is 250 megabytes.
According to ZDNet.com, the error occurred when Microsoft was in
the process of upgrading their paid member's storage amounts, and
some of benefits filtered down to the unpaid members. Sadly, those
who received the unexpected storage boost don't get to keep it.
Although, for $19.95 a year, members can upgrade their accounts
and will legitimately be rewarded with increased storage, as well
as other MSN perks.
This glitch is similar to the one that struck Gmail a couple of
months ago. Gmail's glitch awarded its members with a terabyte (!?!?!)
of storage; enough to run a couple of database driven dynamic sites.
This, like Hotmail's error, was corrected quickly.
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