Users Being Migrated To New Version of Hotmail

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has started work on migrating Hotmail users to a new version after testing the new system on select customers for almost two years. Microsoft stated in the article that more than 20 million users provided feedback to the new-look Hotmail. 'For now, Microsoft will give Hotmail users the option to continue using the old version if they don't want to switch to the upgraded version. However, at some point, everyone will be unilaterally migrated over to Windows Live Hotmail ... New users will be automatically signed up for Windows Live Hotmail but, like any user of the new service, they will get to choose from two user interfaces: a "classic" layout that closely resembles the old Hotmail; or the new interface, which was designed to look like Microsoft's Outlook e-mail and calendaring desktop application.'"

Kudos to MS

[EraseEraseMe]

Despite the long development time (and I've been using the new Hotmail for as long as it's been tested), it definitely is an improvement. Outlook itself is a fantastic e-mail client, and moving Hotmail to that kind of look and feel is definitely a bonus. I wouldn't mind being able to customize it a bit more but in terms of just being able to access my email in a quick and easy fashion, it's definitely ranking quite high in my books.

Dragging and dropping emails
Quick Preview of Emails
Equaling Google's mail storage

It's like there's a party in my mailbox and everyone's invited!

Hotmail is Awesome

[milsoRgen]

This is just more Hotmail Awesomeness IMO, I remember a few weeks ago the account I use for important communications was brought done due to inactivity, they somehow didn't notice I log into Windows Messenger every day... But the icing on the cake was when I logged into an account I rarely if ever use (it's primarily for junk mail, web registrations, etc) was working fine. Hadn't logged into that account in months and it was all there. My main account however lost all archived e-mails and contacts. Awesome. I use gmail now. Don't much care for it's interface, but it's by far more responsive then the new hotmail.

But is it Exchange based?

[dzelenka]

I read the article (really) and it never says what servers are being used behind the curtain. They were embarrassed when they could not put Hotmail on Exchange when it was originally acquired. This would be a grand showcase for the scalability of Exchange. Why isn't it being shouted from the rooftops? Are they waiting to see if it _does_ scale?

How is this news?

[arhar]

First of all, how is this news? I did this about a year ago.

Now, I've been a hotmail user since early 1997. I switched to Gmail when it came out, but kept my Hotmail account for sentimental purposes. A few months back though, I finally completely gave up on it.

20 million feedbacks? Ha! Most likely, they haven't read any of it - and certainly haven't read mine. I wrote them about the maddening lack of 'Check all' function, and the fact that when you start checking emails one by one, if you miss by a few pixels - it will select that one email, and lose all your other selections.

This pretty much makes Live Hotmail completely unusable to anyone who needs to delete a bunch of spam emails (and with Hotmail, you get a LOT of spam.)

At least it sounded good in theory - Gmail is still far behind Outlook, imho. And when somebody makes GOOD web-based Outlook, I'll be sold.

Re:How is this news?

[frogstar_robot]

What's really cute is that they arbitarily decide certain domains harbor spammers when they do not. Hotmail accounts can not be reliably mailed to from our workplace. If a Hotmail user emails one of us then we can reply but we cannot cold send mail to Hotmail. I tried to resolve it with Hotmail and the only solution they offered me was to let a whitelist provider they use to crawl around our network then we'd have to pay them to get on the whitelist. Then MAYBE we could send to Hotmail inboxes again. I simply advised our staff not to rely on Hotmail and I explain "this is Microsoft's fault" whenever Hotmail issues come up.

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[ady1]

Why did Microsoft sit on their hands as Google slowly built up their capabilities to match those of Outlook?

for teh same reason the didn't upgrade IE for several years. There was no competetion in the webmail space. Yahoo! was virtually the only reliable alternate service and it sucked.

I guess server load could always be the answer to those questions

Are you kidding me? that is how microsoft operates. They never improve a product unless:
1. Its market place is in danger or
2. It's a new product.

Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Okay, I don't have a hotmail account, although I do have a Gmail one. So how do the two stack up? From reading comments here and looking at public sources I see:

• Gmail - disk space of 2.6G versus 2G
• Hotmail - attachment size, Hotmail claims to allow 10M attachments as the maximum, whereas Gmail claims 10M for the attachment and message combined. (Can anyone confirm the marketing is true?)
• Gmail - Free POP support
• Tie - I know Gmail has no ads and someone is claiming Hotmail has removed them now too for the free accounts. Can anyone confirm this?
• Gmail - Spam, last I heard Gmail was winning the spam battle without the high false positive rate that has been plaguing Hotmail.
• ? - interface. Any interface designers with a clue taken a look at both of these?
• Gmail - prestige. We interviewed a person with a Gmail address the other day and someone commented that she probably has a clue in technology. At an old job someone made the opposite comment with regard to an applicant with a Hotmail address.
• Gmail - cross platform support. Gmail works the same way with Safari and Opera, while Hotmail degrades to the old interface in them.
• Gmail - language support. Gmail claims to support 41 unique languages (not variants) versus Hotmail's 31.
• ? address book import/export - Gmail supports CSV import and export. Hotmail is unknown?

Does anyone have any other comparative features or info or corrections for the above list?

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[AirRaven]

My only gripe with Windows Live Hotmail's Firefox support is that it automatically kicks you down to the slower, less flashy "classic" view if you access it from a Linux client- if you spoof your User Agent string to make it appear that you're using Firefox on Windows, the full AJAX interface works perfectly.

Blatant OS Discrimination from Microsoft. But then, what else is new?

MOD PARENT UP

[ronocdh]

Thank you for realizing this. Gmail's numbers are at least actual people. My e-mail addresses have NEVER seen spam from a Gmail address, but I've seen hoards from Yahoo alone. Please don't swallow those inflated statistics without choking.

FWIW I use GMail exclusively now

[Dutchmang]

It's simple, I can now connect it to my own POP server and use their nice Web interface. I don't even use Evolution/Thunderbird anymore because they've just made it too easy for me not to. Much better than my ISP-provided NeoMail/Horde/Squirrelmail UIs.

Oh and BTW I don't see any ads at all [customizegoogle.com] in my GMail.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[spoco2]

Actually it works fine in Firefox. I'm one of the ones that have been using it since the beta started and overall quite like it. The right click menus are great ('view source' being a favourite for working out if that suspect piece of mail really is spam or not), drag and drop works fine, and the themes are nice.

My issues with it are:
* Clicking on the tick boxes in order to select emails for deletion or whatever is all well and good except that it's far too easy to miss the tick box and open the email instead.
* Where's the search?
* I get a funny issue with thin white lines breaking up many emails when scrolling within firefox... if I select the image/text on the image they go away... it's odd.

Overall, better than the old hotmail though, and hey it means I still don't have to change the email address people still know me for using since erm... like.... 1997 or something... geeze, has it been 10 years? Yoiks! It gives me a fine address for signing up to whatever the hell I like as I don't care about getting spam at that address :)