I agree with you. I've tried hotmail and Gmail before. Unfortuantely, hotmail has its nasty habit of blocking anyone out if someone tries to "hijack" your email. And I do mean everybody.
Gmail on the other hand also had a really cookies problem. Usually after about a week or so newer cookies would not save to my computer for some reason and the user homepage wouldn't load.
After I've been through both scenarios, Yahoo was the only email server that I've had the longest and had no problems with.