[punky]

Nice of Hotmail to do it.

I reckon though, it will have a significant impact on GMail, because I can check it through Outlook, but I can't, officially with GMail (although someone has done a POP3 server emulation for GMail already. But wether it works, or Google manage to block it, we'll have to see.)

I think people would go down to 1/4 storage if they can use it free in Outlook though.

God knows how much this is costing MS though. 170m users, haing 250meg each? I don't know how much server hard disk space costs bulk, but even if it is half the price of regular client storage, it would still work out like this:

They need (170m x (250/1024)) = 41,480,000 gb
They already have: (170m x 2.5/1024)) = 415,039 gb
They need to acquire: (42,500,000 - 4,250,000) = 37,230,000 gb

Let's assume cost is half the regular end user cost, so £50 per 250gb =

(37,230,000 / 250) * 50 = £7,446, 000

7.4 million quid, if my maths is correct, which it probably isn't. Actually, that is peanuts to them, but felt bigger in my head.