The Final Straw?

I've had a hotmail email address since junior high. I made up a silly address and didn't figure I'd use it. Ten years later, I've still got it. Actually, it has become a bit of a spam email. If a company requires that I use an email address, but I don't think I'll use their email, I give them that address. For email of more a more serious or personal nature, I use gmail. Gmail has been a relief compared to hotmail. For instance, Hotmail once deleted every email I had sorted through into folders. That's right, they deleted only messages I thought important enough to sort into folders. I never again have used folders, which makes for an unpleasant sight. Gmail has a wonderfully useful search feature that actually works, and an amazing amount of storage. Hotmail can't keep up.

Well, they've done it again. This time, the folks at Microsoft in all their wisdom decided that their users shouldn't be able to sort their email by whether it is "unread" or "read." This is probably the most basic type of sorting you can normally do, yet... you can't do it in hotmail. Not only this, but you can't search for "unread." Out of 1914 messages going back to 2003 (must have been when Hotmail last purged all my email?) I have left 23 messages unread. I decided today that while I am waiting for an email to arrive and am checking hotmail more regularly than I usually do, that I would appreciate seeing "no new emails" instead of 23... or was that 24 new emails. Thanks again, Microsoft. It is absolutely astonished that I still use hotmail. I'm sure it only has to do with the fact that I'm worried I'll lose emails if I completely stop using them.

What to do? I'm probably too much of a stick-in-the-mud to finally get rid of it.