Microsoft launches new Hotmail

Posted on 4 Aug 2010 at 12:14

Microsoft has released its upgraded Hotmail web-based e-mail system to all its customers - more than 350 million people across 220 countries - and it's already dividing opinion.

Designed to better integrate the company's communications offerings, one change which has riled many users is that the new Hotmail automatically signs users in to the Messenger chat service when they log in - an unwelcome distraction if all you wanted to do was check your e-mail.

Thankfully, Microsoft is listening to its customers' feedback: according to spokesman Mike Schackwitz the decision to "no longer sign [the user] into Messenger by default" was taken as a result of "lots of feedback" received - and Schackwitz promises that the Hotmail team will continue to monitor public opinion and make further changes as necessary.

To help things along, the new design includes a 'Feedback' link within Hotmail itself - located in the lower-right corner of the page - to send your comments directly back to the team responsible.

More successful than the automatic Messenger sign in are Hotmail's other new features: one-click filters, which make it easy to file or discard messages on the fly; Sweep, which allows users to select groups of similar messages - such as newsletters - and move or delete them as a whole; and Active Views, which follows links in e-mails to YouTube, Hulu, Flickr, SmugMug, and others in order to pull the content - whether that's a picture or a video - and display it as though it were embedded within the message.

Whether Microsoft's changes are enough to tempt users back from rival services - such as Google's popular Gmail - remains to be seen.

Author: Gareth Halfacree

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