So, microsoft decided to be dicks and not let me into my email account that I've had for years unless I provide them with a phone number or an alternate email address. The pretense they give is that it will help security and prevent me from being locked out of my account, but that is exactly what they are doing to me themselves. Anyhow, I'd like suggestions for an alternate email provider. I'm not exactly keen on the idea of GMAIL either, but that may be what I end up going with. So, any suggestions? What do you guys like or use?

Weird, my microsoft email adress still works and I am pretty sure I never gave any phone number.

Otherwise, I have a gmail that I created when I got my first Android and I never had any problems with it

GMail is what I use, because it has the best spam filters. I know that you probably don't want it because it's Google, so in that case, use one of the ones thunderbird defaults to, perhaps.

Yeah Gmail is the best. Or you can host your own email server too but you need a server.
I have a dedicated server (my RPi), but I don't have uptime guaranteed due to parents randomly shutting off internet so I prefer to use Gmail for now.

In my experience the new Hotmail/Live Mail/Outlook.com or whatever they're calling it now also has horribly slow search/message loading, especially compared to Gmail. As in on Gmail I can read and archive a couple of emails, and the next couple dozen emails are ready to be viewed, whereas on Outlook.com I have to wait fifteen seconds for the next few emails to even show up in the list.

Yahoo mail on the other hand just has a bit too complex of a user interface, which still makes getting to the email I want to read slower. Personally I'd say go with Gmail. Having really fast email management/search (which I guess is expected from a search engine) is really convenient whether you're trying to read your inbox or find that one bit of information from that one email four years ago.

I've also run my own mail servers before, but for actually dealing with the emails, I honestly haven't found a decent free desktop email manager better than Gmail is on the web. Maybe I'm just too used to Gmail's interface, but I mean it works.

Straight on: always use several if you can . Personally, i use my work's place email provider for safety (i wouldn't trust either M$ or Google).
Also, i've managed to get some more free accounts from some ISP who are always keen about your whereabouts/habits, etc, to use on less private stuff. I like your awareness about privacy, it makes all the sense to me.

if you can stomach it, setting up your own server for mail is really not bad. there are good, any-purpose VPSs out there for 5-7.50 USD a month, and you'll suddenly have somewhere that you can do all sorts of things, like znc, file hosting, personal web sites, etc

Gmail works great. I use gmail for my private email. We are forced to use outlook for our school mail though T_T

We have to use Gaggle. DIE DIE DIE