And the startling news from Microsoft just keeps coming. It’s not just ripping up Windows, selling its own PCs and trying to get consumers to pay for Office as a service. The company is also launching an ambitious new web-based e-mail service–and it’s not simply an update to Hotmail, which remains the most widely used webmail in the world.
Instead, the new service bears another Microsoft brand that’s just as synonymous with e-mail: Outlook.
Outlook.com is newsworthy in part because it isn’t Hotmail. More important, it’s the first major webmail in years that makes a no-compromises effort to compete with Gmail as a tool for serious, sophisticated users. (The last time I was this excited by a new webmail service was when I saw Yahoo Mail’s 2005 redesign, which ultimately didn’t live up to its potential.) Microsoft’s service is extremely streamlined and reasonably powerful; it feels like something that a discerning person who wouldn’t be caught dead in Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or AOL Mail might use as his or her primary e-mail interface.
It also brings Microsoft webmail into the modern era by hopping aboard the Metro bandwagon, with a minimalist look and feel that are very close to those of Windows 8. In fact, it has more in common with Windows 8′s Mail app than it does with the upcoming Outlook 2013, which hints at Metro without fully embracing it. Full story...
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Instead, the new service bears another Microsoft brand that’s just as synonymous with e-mail: Outlook.
Outlook.com is newsworthy in part because it isn’t Hotmail. More important, it’s the first major webmail in years that makes a no-compromises effort to compete with Gmail as a tool for serious, sophisticated users. (The last time I was this excited by a new webmail service was when I saw Yahoo Mail’s 2005 redesign, which ultimately didn’t live up to its potential.) Microsoft’s service is extremely streamlined and reasonably powerful; it feels like something that a discerning person who wouldn’t be caught dead in Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or AOL Mail might use as his or her primary e-mail interface.
It also brings Microsoft webmail into the modern era by hopping aboard the Metro bandwagon, with a minimalist look and feel that are very close to those of Windows 8. In fact, it has more in common with Windows 8′s Mail app than it does with the upcoming Outlook 2013, which hints at Metro without fully embracing it. Full story...
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