can we all just agree that windows live mail beta sucks?

i know that it shouldn't be too surprising, and that i've brought it upon myself, but good goat! windows live mail beta sucks!

long long ago i got a hotmail address that i still like, and it's a great thing to have for those "i-don't-actually-want-to-give-you-my-email-address-but-here's-my-email-address" situations (craigslist housing boards, i'm looking at you!)

and several weeks ago i got suckered into opting in to windows live mail beta (which sucks!) by an exciting african safari sweepstakes contest (yes, yes, i do have a working knowledge of statistics and i realize that i am extraordinarily unlikely [though no more or less likely that the other users of sucky windows live mail beta] to win...but dude! what if i did? african safari! so sweet!)

the first thing i noticed was that the interface is ugly. and sometimes when i log on it makes me go through a bunch of preferences before i can get to my email (dude, i don't care what color the bar is. give me my craigslist housing email!)

the second thing is that they've gotten really intense about classifying mail. it's not just junk and not junk anymore, some mail is isolated as potentially malicious, and it's more difficult to open. (unfortunately enough, it isn't actual malicious spam that is restricted, at least for me, it's generally craigslist housing board-related email that i need. and the sketchy online pharmacies and fake product tester recruitment email somehow get through just fine.) and links and images are disabled for unknown senders. whatever, fine.

the third thing (and here's where the ridiculousness really begins): part of the african safari contest which i will not win is that they send you email every once and awhile and if you click on a button you increase your chances of winning...but somehow every time but once (yes yes, i know...but won't you feel silly if i do win?) that i've clicked, it's told me that the contest is either over or not yet open for entries. huh?

additionally, it didn't occur to them to make their contest email an allowed sender. so before i can ineffectually click on the button, i have to activate the link to allow content. dudes, you're software engineers. i have a hard-earned BA in a liberal art, but this seems embarassingly obvious to me: IF YOU ARE GOING TO ALTER YOUR VERY OWN EMAIL SYSTEM SO THAT IT GETS TOUGH ON SPAM (um, except for all the actual spam it doesn't tag! funny joke!) AND ALSO MAKE A CONTEST THAT INVOLVES SENDING PEOPLE EMAIL, PERHAPS YOU SHOULD EXCLUDE YOUR OWN EMAIL FROM THE FILTER. i mean, email has to be excludable somehow...i certainly didn't add the penis pills people to my contacts, yet their stuff gets through just fine. and it's never the kind of spam i enjoy.

and finally, for some reason, windows live mail beta sucks.0 is broken. for several days now, i've been greeted with a message explaining that some of the new features are gone* because they had some problems, so now i'm using the "classic hotmail experience" instead of the "windows live mail beta [sucks!] experience," but they're working hard to bring w.l.m.b.s. back soon!

i am not impressed.

*IMPORTANT UPDATE: apparently "some of the new features" includes such exotic options as a search function. that's cool, guys, i don't need to search through my many messages ever. thanks!

update #2: now, the sweepstakes contest email gets delivered into my junk mail folder. weird.