Sunday, February 8, 2009

The Hotmail Team finally catches up

So, the following will be a critical in not unflattering analysis of the "new" features of Windows Live Hotmail.
  • Storage: Oh, thank you Microsoft, I now have 5 GB of storage. Whoopee! What took you so long? In comparison, Yahoo mail has unlimited storage, Google Mail / Gmail has over 7 GB of storage. Couldn't splurge for an extra 2 GB? Also, 5 GB have been available for a few years now so don't act like it's new.
  • POP3 access for USA & Brazil: Again, I am clapping my hands. It only took them how may years to add it to free accounts? Note of comparison, Gmail has had POP3 access since it was brought online in 2004. Hotmail has Yahoo mail beat in this regard as Yahoo has yet to make POP3 available for free. On a related note, Google offers IMAP support. To date, neither Hotmail or Yahoo offer this.
  • Advertisements less intrusive: For the most part, when the Quick Add window (more on that later) is open, there is no advertising to the right side of the reading pane. However when Quick Add is closed, advertising will appear which makes it about the same as before only in a different location. What's the point?
  • Quick Add: An now, the much exalted new feature. It's a small little window that will appear on the right side of the email window. This is to enable you to quickly look up addresses and directions to restaurants, hotels, travel reviews and other information which can to be inserted directly into your email by clicking a button. When open, it can squish the email window. The border between email and Quick Add does not seem well defined. In comparison, the nearest with a similar feature, namely Google, has the ability to recognize that that is a restaurant name or physical location you have mentioned in your message and if possible, recommend a mapping location and/or other related information that you can send along. It isn't as integrated and sometimes doesn't get the right country but most of the time it does. The advantage to Google's system is that it doesn't take up window space in email.
  • What's New feed: Microsoft has added this feed to Hotmail. You better hope that the feed servers are having a good day or it will increase the loading time when you are just trying to log in. As well, updates automatically appear which will increase the loading time. A way this might work better is the method that Yahoo uses. Yahoo will tell you there are feed updates and you can choose to see them or not thereby cutting down on loading time. Gmail doesn't have a direct feed of this type. I don't have a problem with this because I just want to check my email and not manage my entire social life.
  • Email signature in HTML: Wow! You can add HTML to your email signature? Oh, how original. To a certain degree, everyone who develops email applications, has this ability. Some allow you to be more creative then others, but they all do it. This is not exactly breaking news just Microsoft getting with the times, sort of.
  • Windows Live Web Messenger: So, Messenger will finally be integrated into Hotmail. Well I hate to break it to Microsoft but you are a couple years late with this marriage. Yahoo mail integrated Yahoo Messenger into their email years ago. All of the main power features of Yahoo Messenger have been fully integrated so you can either chat to a person on Yahoo Messenger through you Yahoo mail page and they can chat back to you and it will end up on your mail page so you don't even have to load messenger if you don't want to. On the other hand, Google also allows you to chat from inside your mail page. It also allows you to use video and audio chat through the mail inbox page which is better than just being able to chat through the page. Video and audio quality is extremely good. Google implemented these 2 features late last year so Microsoft is extraordinarily behind the integration curve. It's a bit pathetic it took them this long but at least they showed up at the party but they could be stuck with the cheque.
If you are still awake, this concludes the analysis and comparison of Windows Live Hotmail to it's competitors. For the purposes of full disclosure, I was a beta tested 2 versions back for Hotmail and I do not work for the aforementioned competitors although I wouldn't mind working for them. msdogfood@hotmail.com