Who says Microsoft has no taste?
by Volker Weber
Hotmail becomes Outlook.com. Check it out.
Comments
I was just checking it out and then noticed your post. It's not too shabby... Hotmail has definitely been getting better the last year or so and this Outlook version is better still.
Unless they fixed their spam filtering, I'm not interested. I may try it for the 'smart newsletter functionality' (for lack of a better marketing name).
You can sign up and get an @live.com email address instead of the dreaded hotmail.com email address. Gawker posted a really positive review: http://gizmodo.com/5930358/microsoft-did-the-impossible-the-new-hotmail-is-fantastic
It may look nice but in less than 5 minutes (using my already confirmed Windows 8 account)
- it asked for my mobile number (which I gave)
- asked me to enter a security code (which I confirmed)
- asked me to enter a captcha more than 15 times and did not let me through because I exceeded some limit after the first try.
Maybe this is because I use a Mac or my eyes are not good enough for their captchas.
The interface would work for me, the rest is really, really ugly.
"Füge deinem Posteingang Netzwerke wie LinkedIn, *Twitter* und Facebook hinzu."
Twitter finde ich allerdings nicht auf der dann erscheinenden Seite...?!
Das tut jetzt was genau besser als GMail...?
Very pretty, indeed, and another indication that Microsoft might be serious about that Metro style thing (not sure whether that is a good idea in the corporate world, though).
Got myself an address @outlook.com. Now I'm waiting for spam to arrive, for this is what happened immediately last time I created a Hotmail account - which was around 2000, I have to admit though.
I think the main push here is to salvage the Outlook brand. The makeover, nice one, could have been added to Hotmail. The vector here is 'Outlook everyhere' to position against Google and other players. Use one tool, even if in name only, for home and work.
Quite clever
And they get rid of the hot-mail = hot(insert-politicsl-incorrect-adult-phrase-here) associatio
Got one outlook.com address for my account as well.
Unfortunately it does not support IMAP - see comparison at http://t.co/MvF0m7R9 - but it does support Exchange ActiveSync. Don´t know if that means I can configure it as Exchange on the iphone instead of configuring it as Hotmail. Well, since I haven´t done that yet, I configure outlook.com to forward eMail to my gmail.com.
The one thing this identifies for me is that IBM's LotusLive SmartCloud for Social Business mail platforms are slipping further and further behind in terms of features and UI.
The outlook.com launch again shows the rapid convergence of consumer and business platforms, and IBM's lack of a large-scale consumer play unfortunately leaves it short of weapons and investment when it comes to the business platform.
