Product Review: Evaluating the Features of Microsoft New Outlook.com

By Karla Robinson
August 2, 2012

Although Yahoo and Google’s Gmail dominate in the U.S., Microsoft’s Hotmail is still the leading Web email service across the world, according to comScore.
This week, Microsoft is updating the email service, giving it a new name and adding new features that rival the other popular U.S. services.
AllThingsD writer Katherine Boehret has been using the pre-release version of the new Outlook.com — renamed to align with all of Microsoft’s email offerings — and reports encouraging results.
The new version “includes dozens of smart features that simplify the otherwise-exasperating process of managing your email inbox,” she writes. “Examples include optional one-click scheduled cleanups of mail that delete all but the last message you got from someone; a safe, built-in way to unsubscribe from newsletters; and easy methods for creating email sorting rules for new and old messages. I cut the number of emails in my inbox in half after the first day of using Outlook.com.”
The update is also bringing social to email, incorporating profile photos and status updates from various social networks.
As a challenge to other email services, Outlook.com can import contacts from other services and receive emails from other accounts.
Although Microsoft has been somewhat eclipsed by Apple in recent years, this summer has been full of new announcements including its new Surface tablet, the Windows 8 fall launch and upcoming Office 2013.

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