Please share this post to help others fix their Hotmail sync issues. Thanks!
Update: This is the official thread for this issue. If Hotmail has stopped syncing with your mobile device recently, click on the Me Too link and post a reply with your device information.
Update 2: Many people including myself have syncing restored after posting to the thread. If you have this issue, please post info about your device and email account to the thread so that Microsoft support can help you out.
A few years ago, wonderful thing happened: the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol that most mobile devices used to connect to Microsoft corporate email system, Microsoft Exchange, was adopted by Hotmail. All of a sudden, just about any mobile device or smartphone could synchronize not just email but also calendar events, contacts, and tasks with Hotmail. Then about a month ago, a very bad thing happened: Microsoft started breaking EAS for many mobile devices.
From the many (over 20) posts and hundreds of people on the Microsoft Answers forum, it looks like Microsoft is rolling out EAS updates to their Hotmail servers. The result of these updates is that many mobile devices are losing the ability to sync with Hotmail using EAS. This is not you average outage that may last for a few hours or days; this outage has lasted for over a month. Devices using these operating systems are reporting issues:
- Apple OS 5.1.1
- Android: 2.2, 2.3.4, 2.3.5, 2.3.6, 4.0.3
- Meego PR1.2
- WebOS: 1.4.5, 1.4.5.1, 2.1.1, 2.2.4, 3.0.5
- Windows Mobile: 6.1, 6.5, 6.5 Pro
- Windows Phone: 7
I’ve been a happy Hotmail user for many years, since way before I had a PDA much less a smartphone. I consider Hotmail to be one of the first cloud services with which I interacted. But after having first one then a second account stop working on my phone, I am really questioning how ready hosted cloud services are for prime-time. Sure lots of providers are rolling out services these days, but …
- Can the service provider keep the service running over a long term? Anyone remember Windows Media marketplace? It’s gone now. If you bought music from that marketplace and didn’t backup your files when it closed, you’re out of luck.
- Can the provider keep your data and passwords safe? LinkedIn just lost millions of usernames and passwords. Sony lost millions last year.
- Can the provider roll out new capabilities without breaking the service for existing users? Hotmail has done pretty well for years, but it is having a pretty big hiccup now.
- What happens to my data if I cancel my service, or if I want to switch service providers?
- If I subscribe to lots of cloud services will I need a separate username and password for each one? While some cloud services will let you login with an existing Twitter, Facebook, or other account, many services still make you create a new account.
It seems that the cloud services industry has a lot of maturing to do before people can have confidence in cloud computing’s safety, reliability, and usability.
Image credit: The Hacker News