The Similarities Between Hotmail and Mozilla - Essay Example

Research on Different Email Service Providers Knowing Hotmail and Mozilla Thunderbird! According to Wikipedia, "Hotmail is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group." The four letters H, T, M and L in the word 'Hotmail' are usually capitalized to indicate "HTML". HTML is the language used by the World Wide Web for encoding. Moreover, Hotmail has some wonderful features which allows users to share multimedia in the form of pictures, videos etc. On the other hand, Mozilla Thunderbird is also a free email client and is owned by the Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla Thunderbird was released in 2004 and received an excellent response from the technology savvy people. Within the first ten days of its initial release, a million people downloaded the new email client. (Wikipedia) As far as the similarities between hotmail and Mozilla thunderbird are concerned, they are quite few in number as Hotmail leads Mozilla in the market for email client. First, both hotmail and Mozilla thunderbird are supported by 36 languages. These are two of the very few email clients that are offered in so many languages.

Also, both hotmail and Mozilla thunderbird have themes which give users the power to control the appearance of the respective accounts. Furthermore, both are supported on multiple operating systems and both support POP3 and IMAP4 protocol. When we contrast Hotmail and Mozilla Thunderbird, we find out that the number of hotmail users is too many when compared to Mozilla thunderbird. Part of the reason for this is the earlier launch of hotmail. Furthermore, Hotmail has more features than Mozilla Thunderbird.

Examples could include the integration with different programs such as MSN Messenger. This is a service whereby users can see which of their friends are online while logged in to their hotmail accounts. Furthermore, Hotmail also has an audio player to play audio files and it also includes a spell checker. One of the most exciting features about Thunderbird is the fact that it allows users to view email messages from other email clients such as Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail etc. Email Protocols: POP3 and HTTP Email POP stands for Post Office Protocol.

The addition of the number 3 indicates the third version, which is also the latest. POP3 is a standard internet protocol that helps to retrieve an email message. On the other hand, IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. The number 4 in front of the symbol 'IMAP' indicates the fourth version. Both POP and IMAP are the most widely used protocols to retrieve email messages and most of the email clients support both POP and IMAP. Also, both POP and IMAP support offline operation. Moreover, both POP and IMAP rely on the SMTP to send messages and can only access received email messages.

There are major differences between POP and IMAP. POP is an older protocol and is much simpler to understand than IMAP. At the present moment, POP is the most dominant protocol in use. In contrast, IMAP has an added advantage over POP as it processes MIME messages much more efficiently than POP. Furthermore, IMAP has got faster response times than POP. Also, IMAP4 clients have the option of moving messages between mailboxes, unlike POP. In short, POP is dominant at the moment, but the trend is changing as people understand the new features brought up by IMAP4.

References 1. (2009). Hotmail-Wikipedia [WWW Page]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotmail 2. (2009). Mozilla Thunderbird-Wikipedia [WWW Page]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_thunderbird 3. Gray, Terry. University of Washington. (n.d.). The IMAP Connection-Comparing Two Approaches to Remote Mailbox Access: IMAP vs. POP [WWW Page]. http://www.imap.org/imap.vs.pop.brief.html