Kenya must be the most anti-Microsoft country in the world. First of all it is impossible to get into a Hotmail email account in any cyber café in the country. Impossible. You sit and wait and wait. The people next to you note your frustration and snigger behind your back. Forget Marlboro, Kenya is Yahoo country (with a slight smattering of Gmail).
Then Internet Explorer just clogs up and dies on Kenya networks. You could be looking at a completely graphic less page and you will still get 15% loading, 20 % loading … what’s up with that? The clever cyber café people have hooked up with FireFox (although you knew you can run FireFox straight from your USB stick didn’t ya?) Ironically the only time you can get into a hotmail email account is if you are using a FireFox browser.
So in solidarity with the rest of my country men and women, I’m defecting from Hotmail to Yahoo. It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. In fact it’s taken me over a year to decide to switch. I was even a Windows Live Mail Beta tester. (And yes I do have a Gmail account but isn’t there something slightly sinister about relying on an email service that has been in beta for what feels like a century now and besides the whole archive thing does my head in).
Next … why i will not be leaving Movabletype for WordPress just yet.
Pamoja Tuangamize Ukimwi
Kaybees - Thanks for voting!
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January 19, 2006 at 2:25 am
Keguro
gmail
gmail
gmail
gmail
(I have yahoo, but the archive feature is too deadly!)
January 19, 2006 at 5:11 am
maitha
most cyber cafes still use old PCs capable of only supporting Win98 thats why the use of IE is that high and at times it fails to change the protocol to https .Another factor could be the ISP - most cybers in town are on the Telkom network which has always been a pain
January 19, 2006 at 7:21 am
Prousette
Wondered for a while why I never could get into my hotmail account even in the office with IE till I discovered Firefox;
*smile*
January 19, 2006 at 11:02 am
Remi
People still use hotmail, get out of here!
January 19, 2006 at 11:48 am
Mentalacrobatics
@maitha … which ISP do you recommend? and whats all this i hear about adsl/broadband at reasonable prices?
@Remi … silly loyalty i know, but better late than never eh!
@Prousette defect siste defect!
@Keguro hiding a new email behind an old email? what the hell is that. you should subscribe to a mailing list when you have 20 emails all hiding behind each other .. well that when the fun begins!
January 20, 2006 at 9:15 am
maitha
internet pricing is yet to hit a decent low around here maybe , just maybe when the fiber project rolls out in ‘08 then we can start talking abt reasonable pricing .
ISPs to use - depends what one is looking for , right now UUNET , AccessKenya and Afsat are the people to do business with though they each have their pitfalls in one area or another they all manage to provide decent services .
January 20, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Mentalacrobatics
I thought that cable had hit Athi River and would be in Nairobi this year. 2008 sheeesh! thanks for the ISP heads up.
January 20, 2006 at 8:31 pm
JKE
Yeah, talking about cable & dsl - could anyone give us a round up on inet access in Kenya with an overview of costs & speed? I think that would be much appreciated by many, ama?
Hotmail: ati bwana, how could you??? What about using Squirrelmail or any other own webmailer on your mental domain?