What are your thoughts on Outlook.com

[bazwillrun]

This is the "new" mail system that MS have decided will take over and replace Hotmail and Live......what you didnt know that your Hotmail address is going to vanish ?

I opened an account to see if its any use...........Oh dear, what an awful look, sparse doesnt begin to cover it ! (copying Google Mail by the look of it)

I have been trying to work out how to send a Bcc newsletter out, easy on Gmail (2 clicks)and all my other mail services, seems to be impossible with Outlook.

Click on the Cc and Bcc text and a box opens to insert an email address, but hold on thats the Cc box wheres the Bcc ?.........Oh I see its hidden by the other box that has opened showing your Frequently used contacts, and I have to click somewhere else on the page to close it and lo and behold theres the Bcc box !

I have yet to work out how to add the 2,700 contacts from the newsletter contact list to the Bcc box in one go, so far its adding each one individually !,
Surely MS cant have released this in such an unuseable state with such basic features not working , can they ?

[jno]

I haven't been ordered to switch yet, so I won't.

Is it definite that hotmail addresses vanish? Or will they just divert to your new account?

[bazwillrun]

http://www.zdnet.com/...eview-faq-7000001967/

Not immediately , but eventually they will, I'd lay money on it, still a way off though.
Butt meantime you can faff about with aliases and Outlook.

Its just another attempt by MS to get into "The Cloud"

[AB Editor]

I think it's excellent. I like the metro design which MS introduced a couple of years ago on their phones. Recently (in the last 8 months) Google has taken to copying the sparseness of it.

To me it's clean, quick and functional enough for the majority of people.

There are features missing, as you say. I would expect them to turn up in due course. Remember what Gmail was like when it was launched?

[AB Editor]

And yes, they will be forcing you across from hotmail to a full live/outlook account (from what I have read elsewhere).

You'll get new account with all your old mail, contacts etc.... but it'll say @outlook on the end.

Its just another attempt by MS to get into "The Cloud"
I think, technically, as most of us are there already it's just an attempt for them to get us to pay for their other cloud services :)

[VHG]

They are not allowed to call it "Metro" any more, some company in Germany complained.

So it will have a different name in Windows 8 and future versions of Windows phone etc.

http://www.theregiste...3/metro_ui_name_dead/

[bazwillrun]

MS claim that Metro was only a work in progress name....yeah right.

I still want to know how a beta release can be so unfinished its barely useable for what are basic functions.

dont forget this is not some new type of untested software application its a rehashed streamlined version of whats already "out there", relatively speaking this is not a big coding job.

I can only guess they timed everything wrong and realised that to to get this out with Windows 8 it has to go ready or not

[VHG]

>>>and realised that to to get this out with Windows 8 it has to go ready or not

Bit like with Vista, ship it even though it is not ready.

I have worked on large software development projects and I remember someone saying "software is never ready, it just ships every now and again".

The danger often is that developers want to keep sticking new code in, and the managers and planners want to ship the product.

There is often a long delay after you "freeze" the code before it is shipped, to give time for extensive testing (months in some cases) and by then the developers have written new function that they want to put in.

And if they put it in it destabilises the product.

Large software development projects are a nightmare.