However, the results on the receiving end can vary depending on whether English, Simplified or Traditional Chinese is selected as the preferred language in the sender’s Hotmail account. 

Message cannot be read or decoded. Message appears correctly as is. Message appears as code initially, but if you select Japanese (Auto-Select) from the View/Encoding submenu, it will display properly. Message appears as code initially, but if you select traditional or simplified Chinese depending on its original coding from the View/Encoding submenu, it will display properly. Message appears as code initially, but if you select Japanese (Shift_JIS) from View/Character coding/More/East Asian submenu, it will display properly. Message appears as code initially after you opened it in its own window. But if you close the message window, select Japanese from the language bar/button, then re-open the message, it will display correctly. Message appears as code initially after you opened it in its own window. But if you close the message window, select traditional or simplified Chinese depending on its original coding, and then re-open the message, it will display correctly.

A user who uses mostly English but only occasionally reads and writes Chinese may still find that it is worth the hassle to switch to Chinese in his/her preferences before writing a message in Chinese and switch back to English after sending it. The advantage here is that the message is much more likely to to appear in the recipient's mailbox correct as is than when English is the preferred language. Even when a message sent by Hotmail (Chinese) requires manual selection of encoding scheme, choice of Chinese works, which is what it should be, not Japanese, as in the case of Hotmail (English) and several other e-mail programs. However, messages sent by Hotmail (English) but not those composed under Hotmail (Chinese) are readable by Eudora.