Last night, Microsoft rolled out 3 new Windows Live betas as Nick White reports at Microsoft’s Windows Vista Team Blog:
Today our Windows Live team is releasing new betas for several Windows Live applications: Windows Live Messenger 8.5, Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Writer. All three are now available for download.
White provides many more details on what is new, but in a nutshell:
As anticipated, Microsoft today launched Windows Live Hotmail worldwide with a spiffy new AJAX interface and the intent of retiring its venerable MSN Hotmail which has over 280 million users. Some key aspects:
There are more new features and aside from the nomenclature madness, this all seems worthwhile, but now begins the long transition of existing users which Major anticipates will be complete by November. I can’t help but observe that the transition would be faster if they had the Outlook Connector and the new Live Mail client ready now.
Update: Ina Fried has an interesting Hotmail background story that reveals that the new AJAX interface was deemed too slow, particularly on dial-up lines, and that was the reason that an updated “classic” interface was reintroduced to the final product at some delay.