What on earth does that have to do with capitalism? And what makes you think your choice of how to present yourself doesn't become part of how others perceive you?

You might wish to read this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/yp/pretending_to_be_wise/

Excellent link. This phenomenon has been driving me up the wall on another site I frequent and that article captures it well.

I don't see how the article applies here, as we're not discussing a matter of significance. Were we discussing something that affected people's lives, it'd be appropriate. But I was being deliberately irreverent towards the notion that one should take care to choose the 'right' email provider. After all, its a fucking email provider. It sends and receives email. That's it. To talk about it as if it is something to take seriously is goofy.

Peace.

I wasn't advocating choosing the "right" provider (though you should certainly try to pick a good one, for your own sake!).

I have simply found that people's technical competence generally (GENERALLY) corresponds to what domain they are using. It's an observation, not a fashion trend.

Hotmail ruined its reputation in a few ways, but the primary way was how they would embed advertisements in your emails. So if you receive an email from an @hotmail person, you also receive a cute little ad!

That, and it took a bit for Hotmail to catch up on having huge mailboxes. It used to be that if you weren't on gmail or a private provider, you probably couldn't handle getting 3-4 CAD files a day for weeks at a time.