Yeah, that 30-day window was ridiculous. I lost my hotmail in 2006 after exclusively using gmail for 6 weeks. I'd like to know the origins of the policy. Who decided that if someone goes a few weeks without checking their email that they're either dead or no longer interested in using the internet?
It was a different MS back then, cloud services were still new, and companies were still figuring it out. Maybe the reasoning was to keep people afraid from using hotmail alternatives in fear of losing their accounts.