After launching SkyDrive, a free online storage service formerly known as Windows Live Folders, Microsoft announced that free Windows Live Hotmail accounts will get some supplementary storage space.
Hotmail’s facelift exited beta-testing in May, after more than a year of intense work from Microsoft’s engineers, offering its new and existing users (estimated at around 280 million) a fresh new, AJAX-based interface, 2GB of free storage space, customization options that included even the possibility to revert to the “old” MSN look and feel and availability in 36 foreign languages.
Today, Ellie Powers Boyle, who has been working at the Windows Live Hotmail department since 2004, gave us a lengthy and interesting update on how Microsoft is enhancing the service as the time goes by.
The big news of course is the one related to the increase in free storage space, which will gradually reach 5GB, from the current 2GB. Advanced users of Hotmail, which pay around $15 for a professional account, will see their accounts rewarded with 10GB, from the current 4GB. This is clearly a move meant at winning more users from Google, since the Mountain View behemoth is already offering 2.8GB. However, the recent update is likely to be met with indifference by Yahoo Mail users, who are enjoying the benefits of infinity for quite some time. In March, Yahoo announced unlimited storage space for all e-mail accounts set up on its domain.
Microsoft has listened to its customers and decided to reduce the dimension of the header in the user interface, to provide more space for mail-preview, and has also decided to increase the time a junk or deleted mail stays on their servers.
A lot of the updates that will be gradually added address performance and security issues. “Speed is one of the most important aspects of a web-based email service. We’ve spent more time in this release identifying what parts of the product are slowest and fixing those. We hope that you notice an improvement when this update is released to your account, and we’ll continue our work on performance in future releases,” said Ellie Powers Boyle.
Microsoft also boasts with the fact that it is the first webmail service that automatically detects duplicate contacts: “If you get a message from “Steve Kafka” and click “add contact” but there’s already a Steve Kafka, we’ll let you know and let you add Steve’s other e-mail address to your existing “Steve Kafka” contact entry. We’re just trying to be smarter to make your life easier and faster. There’s also a wizard you can run to clean up your existing duplicate contacts.”
Spam and phishing scams are also targeted: “Hotmail blocks images and links in messages from unknown senders for your protection from spammers and phishing scams. Now you can click directly on the gray square or link to decide if you want to show content in a message.
We’ve made it possible to report phishing attacks like those fake bank notices or fraudsters who want your checking account number so they can supposedly make a deposit. Just click “report phishing” if you think you’ve found a dangerous scam.
In the junk folder, click “not junk” to help train our filters.”
One of the useful and laudable features Microsoft has added to its Windows Live Hotmail service is the so-called “co-branding”, available for those who have e-mail accounts hosted on the software giant’s servers.
“Hotmail is currently hosting e-mail for universities (and a few ISPs) around the world, so we show their logos in Hotmail,” Boyle added.
There are several other improvements worth mentioning, like the accepting meeting-requests or vacation replies, but I’m sure most of you won’t see them until Microsoft completes the transition of all e-mail accounts to the new version.
