Hotmail, Microsoft’s long running webmail service, is set to get a facelift, with new features aplenty. Some are smart, some are half baked, and more than a few seem to have been cribbed straight from Gmail, but they’re all aimed at making Hotmail your number one address. Read on for what’s coming.
The new look Hotmail will be rolling out gradually this Summer, bringing several features Gmail users will recognise. There’s a new Conversations view to show email conversations, though you can toggle it on or off thankfully, as it’s a divisive but mandatory feature of Gmail. There’s also a Windows Live Messenger chat window on the left hand side that can be set to login by default – just like Google Talk in Gmail, in fact, though you can have conversations with more than one person, it being Windows Live Messenger.
The new Hotmail design also integrates with the online Office suite. You can view documents, PowerPoint presentations and spreadsheets in the relevant online Office app, amend them and then reply with the changes straight from the document. Disappointingly however, this feature won’t work with .doc files, just the newer .docx format.
Our favourite touch has to be Hotmail’s new integration with other online services. Links to Flickr albums and YouTube videos automatically embed slideshows and videos in messages. Gmail already does this for YouTube of course, but only with clips the size of a postage stamp.
What the new Hotmail does beat Gmail with is a well thought through option to attach data heavy photos as a temporary SkyDrive link. Where once you’d have to faff around registering for a YouSendIt account to send a handful of full resolution snaps, you can attach them as normal, safe in the knowledge they won’t clog up the recipient’s inbox, appearing instead as thumbnails until they choose to download them. It’s an incredibly useful tool if you regularly chat with anyone who can’t open picture attachments with their work email.
Finally, Microsoft has also revealed that a dedicated Hotmail iPhone app is due out at the same time. The company hasn’t provided any images or many more details, but David Laws, Windows Live Marketing manager, did confirm that it’ll be a native app, rather than an iPhone optimized site. However, unless it adds all these features and runs in the background on iPhone OS 4, we’re not sure why it’ll be preferable to using the regular Mail inbox.
What do you think of the new Hotmail features? Will they make you switch from a desktop client, or even Gmail? Let us know in the comments below.
Out Summer | £Free | Microsoft
