Hotmail: Since 1996

Eileen Brown links to the updated MSN Hotmail Fact Sheet, and notes that it says Hotmail has been around since 1996. So, I did some checking, and I've been on the same Hotmail email address since 1997. I had no idea I was an early adopter. I was just trying to use eBay :-). Looking back, its easy to forget that there was a time when Hotmail was just another startup, until it was bought by Microsoft in 1998. I'm feeling kind of sad, realizing all those years of email I deleted due to a lack of storage space.