I’ve had my hotmail account for years and years, and frankly while Gmail and other free online services may be better in terms of quality and usability, right now I’m married to Microsoft and hotmail.

But what if I wanted to forward from hotmail to gmail? Forget it. Unfortunately, with a free hotmail account you cannot forward your email to non-Microsoft accounts. However, you can do it by upgrading your account to Hotmail Plus.

For $19.95 a year, with Hotmail Plus, you have the ability to forward your hotmail message anywhere want. You also get 10GB total in storage space (up from 5GB on the free version), more room for attachments and no advertisements on your email page.

There are still some ways to get your hotmail into gmail, but for a pure forwarding standpoint upgrading and shelling out the extra $20 is the only game in town. And that’s how Microsoft I’m sure would like it to stay.