The new version of Howmail was released yesterday with a plethora of new features. But not all users will see them right away. The new features are the Sweep menu, the integrated Office Web Apps, new attachment limits up to 10 GB using SkyDrive. SkyDrive is part of Microsoft’s Windows Live collection of online services. It provides file storage and sharing services. It allows users to take a file and upload it to the computing cloud, then access the file from a web browser.
Hotmail also has social networking capabilities with the ability to create and send photo albums right from Hotmail. Just one thing here, you may not see these features today, but everyone will be upgraded this summer. It’s a technology issue. Let me explain.
Hotmail servers are grouped into clusters. Microsoft has hundreds of clusters. Microsoft starts by upgrading a single cluster. Then they wait some time to make sure that it’s running smoothly and that the upgrade does not create problems. They move on to the next cluster.
If they find a bug, it is fixed before going further, and provide that fix to everybody who has been in the upgrade path.
Accounts are assigned to clusters to balance the total account load. It is not done by country or by tenure of the account. This means that each account has the same chance as the next to be upgraded.
So how is using Hotmail? Here is a chart that shows the usage by three of the largest web mail accounts.
Microsoft is hoping that their new version will attract more users because they have tried to make changes that affect the use of the e-mail. For instance,
- They will provide tools to remove the clutter in your inbox, not just the spam.
- Provide time saving tools to help you to save time when doing things you most often do in your inbox.
- New view, share and edit features to work with Microsoft Office documents anywhere you are online, regardless or not whether you have Office installed.
By these accounts, Hotmail should provide users with many features that have been found on other e-mail providers, but also some that are not available anywhere else. A comeback is certainly possible.
Source: Microsoft
