My outlook.com email has been importing my gmail inbox for the past 12 hours, runs in the background so isn't interrupting. So far I have 6,500 emails imported (full emails, including attachments etc. not just headers) so a few more days to go before I'm in sync!
If you set it up right, it shows the twitter and facebook status lines from anyone you receive email from, which is a bit strange at first. You have full control over these settings though.
Also you get 'skydrive' which is 7gb of storage where you can put large attachments for emailing. Like dropbox, but integrated into outlook.com
Another nice feature is calendar. If you've linked it to facebook, it looks up all your friends fb accounts, and automatically adds their birthdays to your outlook calendar.
Oh, and finally... Word, Excel, and Powerpoint email attachments can be viewed and edited natively in the browser. Neat. (Microsoft finally get it)
Did the exact same thing, I wish the sign up process checked for the already gone accounts before they made me enter that 10 letter verification code - it was painful!
and now I have that exact question what do I do with it?
Interface looks nice and clean, although it fails on Opera. Photo attachment and slideshow is pretty nice - I am thinking I can start using it as a clean slate for only important emails - hmm that's how I first started using my gmail account and now I get 90% spam, and half of the spams I get are subscribed by me.
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Tried to get greedy and grab Jason only, but it was already gone. Got my name though...
My outlook.com email has been importing my gmail inbox for the past 12 hours, runs in the background so isn't interrupting. So far I have 6,500 emails imported (full emails, including attachments etc. not just headers) so a few more days to go before I'm in sync!
If you set it up right, it shows the twitter and facebook status lines from anyone you receive email from, which is a bit strange at first. You have full control over these settings though.
Also you get 'skydrive' which is 7gb of storage where you can put large attachments for emailing. Like dropbox, but integrated into outlook.com
Another nice feature is calendar. If you've linked it to facebook, it looks up all your friends fb accounts, and automatically adds their birthdays to your outlook calendar.
Oh, and finally... Word, Excel, and Powerpoint email attachments can be viewed and edited natively in the browser. Neat. (Microsoft finally get it)
A lot of these things have been in Microsoft Live Services for quite a long time, but they have been updating things and re branding services in conjunction with upcoming Windows 8 release. I've been a long time fan of Microsoft web services since the beginning, and agree that they are finally pulling all this together to make it more appealing to the masses that didn't realize what they had.
I started using their cloud services early on, and I was grand fathered in on my SkyDrive free space quota of 25 gb. They did that a few months ago when they released the desktop version of SkyDrive Sync....Sweet! :)
A lot of these things have been in Microsoft Live Services for quite a long time, but they have been updating things and re branding services in conjunction with upcoming Windows 8 release. I've been a long time fan of Microsoft web services since the beginning, and agree that they are finally pulling all this together to make it more appealing to the masses that didn't realize what they had.
Yes, I noticed when clicking around there are still pages where you click 'hotmail' to get back to 'outlook' - So there are some legacy branding issues still there.
Hotmail needed an overhaul though, which is what they've done here. With the clever move of re-branding it as outlook.com and giving people a chance to start from scratch (spammers having stolen most of the useful @hotmail.com addresses - who really wants myname098432@hotmail.com as an address anyway?)
It's the Office stuff I think will draw people over, Word, Excel, Powerpoint integration - the online version of these apps is pretty impressive. Especially if they play nicely with Windows phones and Windows 8
Plus, not having banner ads in email gives it a nice clean look - side-by-side against gmail it actually makes gmail look dated.
A lot of these things have been in Microsoft Live Services for quite a long time, but they have been updating things and re branding services in conjunction with upcoming Windows 8 release. I've been a long time fan of Microsoft web services since the beginning, and agree that they are finally pulling all this together to make it more appealing to the masses that didn't realize what they had.
Yes, I noticed when clicking around there are still pages where you click 'hotmail' to get back to 'outlook' - So there are some legacy branding issues still there.
Hotmail needed an overhaul though, which is what they've done here. With the clever move of re-branding it as outlook.com and giving people a chance to start from scratch (spammers having stolen most of the useful @hotmail.com addresses - who really wants myname098432@hotmail.com as an address anyway?)
It's the Office stuff I think will draw people over, Word, Excel, Powerpoint integration - the online version of these apps is pretty impressive. Especially if they play nicely with Windows phones and Windows 8
Plus, not having banner ads in email gives it a nice clean look - side-by-side against gmail it actually makes gmail look dated.
Yes, the final branding and interface changes will be made by summers end or sooner. This is just the preview of it so you will still see the Windows Live interface for things like the calendar and SkyDrive right now. So far it looks as if they have the mail related content such as the inbox and contacts up and running. I love the streamlined modern look and the interaction between photo attachments and social media etc.
I've been using outlook.com for 5 months now. And I tried to like it, I really did. But it's time for me to switch back to Gmail.
Until Microsoft make the web interface snappier and get rid of a few irritating bugs and design flaws, Gmail is better for web email - It's snappier, lighter on the client, has a better search engine, and is a much more intuitive UI design.
I was forwarding all my gmail to my outlook account, but I kept having to log back into gmail for the more powerful search features. And the odd time outlook.com would start freezing up in my browser and I really wanted to just send a quick mail, I'd flick back to Gmail. Outlook is sluggish in comparison.
I'm not 100% enamoured with gmail either (too many spam false positives for example) but it's the best web email I can find.
I'm not 100% enamoured with gmail either (too many spam false positives for example)...
That line surprised me because I am forever amazed how accurate gmail is - in all the years I've been using it, I can still count on one hand the number of times gmail messed up a message (false positive OR negative).
