There’s lots of news coming from the Windows Live Blog regarding upgrades and improvements to Windows Live Hotmail. Probably the biggest upgrade is that all users now have 5GB of storage (paid users will have 10GB). To compare, my Gmail account is currently at around 2.8 GB which means at this point, Google’s Gmail offers the lowest amount of storage among their competitors (Yahoo offers unlimited).
An increase in mail storage wasn’t the only announcement though, there’s a whole list of changes and updates. One that stood out was “contacts de-duplication.” Maybe it stood out just because of the name, but they say that they’re the first email service to offer a service to clean up your list of duplicate contacts. So for example, if you have three entries for the same person – they’ll put all of the entries together as one.
A few other changes (full list here):
- Performance – improvements in speed
- Forward messages – forward your Hotmail messages to other Hotmail accounts.
- Smaller header – which means more space for your email
If you don’t have these changes applied to your account yet, don’t worry. The Windows Live Hotmail team says that these features are being gradually rolled out to their customers over the next few weeks. I checked my account, and no changes are there quite yet.
Source: Thanks to Richard in the Forums and the Anonymous tipster!
I just got the new version in one of my Hotmail accounts, and was pleasantly surprised to see the 5 GB storage and the forwarding option.
Then … I tried to compose a new message. (I’m using Firefox.) I couldn’t do it … the “Working on your request” stayed on the screen forever. Ugh. Now I’m not so excited about this anymore.
Ahhh…so in the midst of launching these new features they must have broke some things for Firefox users. I can’t believe they didn’t thoroughly test in Firefox before launching the updates.
For some reason I couldn’t log in to post this.
It’s nice to see them doing new stuff (though who needs 5GB unless they’re storing files is beyond me), but I wish they’d kept it as Live Mail. Hotmail just makes me think of stupid kids and people who don’t understand the internet – where can I get a Hotmail? What’s your Hotmail? No, I don’t use that. Oh, get one so I can send you messages. ARG! It’s bad enough that people still refer to Messenger as being MSN (which is crappy branding left over from Microsofts rubbish first attempt at a network).
Anyway, away from moaning about names and idiots I do wish they’d stick the email inbox as the front page rather than MSN Today.
Inferno- I agree about the “who needs 5gb?”.
I’ve been using gmail since April now and I’m barely using up 3-4 MB…
I still prefer gmail, as I prefer friendly user interface, labeling, and archiving, over tons of space.
Well agreed that 5 GB is way more than enough, but I think google will rethink its 2.8 GB limit. And iam a avid Firefox user,so Hotmail can wait.
Competition is always good, no complaints here. I’m a gmail user and will continue to be as long as the service stays as good as it is, but now maybe they will bump up their storage.
Oops … my mistake. It was Adblock Plus that was interfering with the LiveMail “compose” mode, not Firefox. I added a new filter to ABP and all was well.
Steve, what filter did you add to ABP to fix the problem? I still have it disabled because I couldn’t get any filters to work with it.
Inferno_str1ke, there is now an option that allows you to go directly to the Inbox and bypass the Today page. Go to Options > More Options > Customize Your Mail > Today Page Settings (at the bottom).