Microsoft Unveils Outlook.com, Hotmail's Successor 368
New submitter faraway writes "Microsoft has just unveiled Outlook.com, the planned successor to Hotmail.com. It includes a lot of what you'd expect from email today, including storage (images, data), a calendar, integration with other Microsoft tools, and of course a clean UI. According to ZDNet, 'Outlook.com is integrated with Windows and Office, and can pull in Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and LinkedIn contacts. The new mail client has the Metro look and feel. And it is providing users with more granular control over which ads they see and where they see them.'"
Re:Fantastic first impressions (Score:5, Insightful)
Obvious shill is obvious. Why dont you and faraway do us a favor and remove yourselves from the site?
Is slashdot's reputation really that low that companies dont think we'll see through such a blatant attempt?
Ads? (Score:5, Insightful)
The new mail client has the Metro look and feel. And it is providing users with more granular control over which ads they see and where they see them.'"
Ads? What do ads have to do with email?
no thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
And it is providing users with more granular control over which ads they see and where they see them.'"
My local mail app doesn't show me ANY ads, it doesn't expose the contents of my email to data miners, it lets me instantly search email and compose new mail even if the network goes down, it doesn't lock me into proprietary solutions, and as a mail packrat it's let me take my mail collection with me as I move from system to system since 1984.
Re:Fantastic first impressions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fantastic first impressions (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean to tell me that this account with no other posts, who has nothing bad to say about using an as-yet-unreleased product, lies about the competitors features, and also implies that the aforementioned competitors url (email with the first letter changed) is hard to remember is a shill?
I never would have guessed!
Obvious strategy. Can they pull it off? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is something Microsoft should have undertaken immediately after acquiring Hotmail. Microsoft has a strong brand with Outlook, and it makes total sense to be using that brand for their webmail offering.
Doing it at this time also makes sense. They're making a big push for a new user interface ("metro"), and this is one more place where they can integrate that interface, making it consistent across their offerings.
Of course, the devil is in the details. If they do it wrong, it will weaken their Outlook brand and push existing customers towards competitors. On the other hand, they're getting a ton of free publicity, so they have a chance to capitalize on the moment and steal market share.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, they don't have a good history of execution on things like this--most likely the new platform will be horrible, but they'll keep at it, and after a few generations, it will be a decent competitor, but that's three to five years out.
Re:Fantastic first impressions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fantastic first impressions (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would I want to customize my advertisements, I like them unobtrusive. I doubt I could turn them off.
With tagging, who needs folders.
I doubt it will be faster than gmail, what with the extra javascript required for metro.
And who has trouble remembering their email address domain? Seriously?
And why would I want integration for my email.
And of course it's your honest opinion, you were most likely paid for this.
Seriously, just get out.
Re:Better spam filtering? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hotmail's spam filtering is without a doubt the worst on the web. Obvious spam ends up in my Inbox, and legitimate mail ends up in the spam.
I'm not sure this is much better. I've had access to a preview version of Outlook.com for a couple of weeks now, and I've been forwarding it mail from an account that gets lots of press releases. A few of the really obvious spam emails end up in the junk folder automatically, but so do some of the "legitimate" press releases -- and that's assuming you wouldn't normally classify a press release as spam. 90 percent of the mail I sent it seemed to sail right through.
What's more, Outlook.com tries to detect context for each of the mails you receive, to give you different types of information linked to the message. One thing it tries to do is differentiate between mail from individuals that's intended specifically for you and mail from mailing lists. Needless to say, next to nothing I sent it wasn't from a mailing list, but it flagged a few messages as being from individuals anyway.
What it does when it thinks you're seeing a message from one of your friends is it tries to display other information about that person in the box where the ads would go, such as the latest post from their Twitter or Facebook feed. It was pretty amusing to see an email from someone that began, "Dear {{YourName Here}}" and off to the right, Outlook.com was asking me to Friend the sender on Facebook.
Needless to say, my "usage" of the product so far has been pretty atypical, and maybe by running an email account on it where I don't actually talk to any of my friends and 90 percent of the incoming mail is totally unsolicited breaks the expected usage pattern.
But still, their vision of how email works doesn't really jibe with mine. Say one of my business contacts sends me an email about a project we're working on. Is this the time to follow their Twitter feed? Probably not. All of that functionality just seems like feature creep, and I suspect it has something to do with marketing partnerships.
Re:Fantastic first impressions (Score:5, Insightful)
I quickly looked over the new Outlook.com service and I must say I'm quite impressed.
I just looked in the litter box today, and I must say, I'm quite impressed.
Everything is clear
That would be a first for MS! We have Outlook at work (the dedicated email program) and it's the worst email client I've ever used. You have to log into the webmail component to change your email password, the password criteria are different than the mainframe and network password criteria, there are limits to mailbox and message sizes (we never had that BS with Novell's client), and they just, as Microsoft always does, completely changed the webmail interface; they moved "change password" from "Options" to the uper right hand corner, with white on yellow text. What kind of moron designs that sort of idiocy?
it works fast and the UI looks great.
I simply don't believe you. Sometimes it takes hours for an email to get to me from down the damned hall, we never had that problem with Novell and I never saw that problem with any other email system, either.
By the way, which division of Microsoft do you work for? Marketing? Because since they switched to Outlook, I hear nothing but complaints at work.
Outlook.com is also an great domain name and easy to remember.
What is so easy to remember about "outlook" unless you've been using outlook and outlook express for years? Hotmail at least had the name "mail" in in. This change from hotmail to outlook seems utterly retarded to me.
I can't but recommend you to try it!
No fucking way.
Re:Where's the logout link? (Score:5, Insightful)
They have idiots at Google too, that took a good, functional UI and revamped it with a nonsensical one.
For instance: in the old Gmail, you had clearly labeled HTML buttons that said "Delete" "Compose" "Archive", etc. It was easy to find.
In the new UI, somebody decided that little tiny dark icons with no text description were cool. Now the Delete button is replaced by a tiny black icon that represents a trash can. Archive button is replaced by another tiny black icon which looks similar to the other little black icons. So basically, what used to be a two-step operation (move your mouse cursor to Delete button, click) is now a four or five-step operation. (move cursor over little black icon and hover, wait for the onHover title to see if it's the one you want, go on to the next little icon and hover, read title, then click if it's the right one).
Re:Fantastic first impressions (Score:4, Insightful)
With tagging, who needs folders.
Not everyone is down on the semantic labeling concept. Some people like plain old folders. For example my girlfriend switched back instantly from the new Gmail to the old one for that very reason. Now she's stuck with the new Gmail and hates it. Both are available depending on your preference in Outlook.
And who has trouble remembering their email address domain? Seriously?
Obviously he meant easy to remember for other people, not easy to remember for yourself.
And why would I want integration for my email.
I have all of my facebook contacts and their emails instantly available in my contacts list. If I want to email a friend, instead of hopping on facebook to find their email, it's right there. Very convenient.
Re:Where's the logout link? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if you think the GUI is hard to figure out, just go to a setting buried three levels deep behind a menu represented by an icon lacking text to fix it!
Re:Fantastic first impressions (Score:1, Insightful)
Outlook.com - All the machine-lagging, fifteen-levels-of-nested-dialog-boxes crapness of Outlook. Now on the web! Yay \o/
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)