Hotmail Evolves - Windows Live Mail Beta

Well it seems that everything in the MS world is going live. This includes mail. Hotmail users can sign up for a beta test, so I did. The only thing that I use Hotmail for is spam and Messenger - the latter being almost a requirement these days to communicate with teenaged relatives. Typical of MS - the beta is IE only - to the point that even in the invite, the only browser that can properly read the link is IE. To it's credit, it does seem to work rather well (nee as proported - drag and drop, clean interface akin to Outlook/Entourage) and it has basic functionality in non IE browsers, even though you are greeted with a page stating that WLMB is not ready for this browser yet. Is something missing? Read this. We just started building this version of the Mail Beta that works for all browsers. We’re not done yet, so some functionality is missing right now. You can read your mail right now by clicking on the Inbox. Note that the web browser you are using does not yet support all Mail Beta functionality. You can still use this browser to access basic Mail Beta functionality, like reading and composing messages. We will make more functionality available for this web browser soon. Download the latest version of Internet Explorer to access all Mail Beta functionality Using Internet Explorer versions 6.0 and higher will give you the best Mail Beta user experience with access to all Mail Beta functionality such as the reading pane and keyboard shortcuts. Internet Explorer 6.0 is available only for computers with certain system requirements. So why am I trying this? Well, it seems that there are still a large number of people on Hotmail for whatever reason, and that means that on occasion there are questions about it that may need to be answered. And - as per any other geek out there... why not. Kudos to MS though, they did role it out to those who want to try as opposed to Yahoo who have kept their new mail rather limited. Now all Google needs to do is add a calendar that can read feeds from iCal, Outlook et al and it can be an online - integrated communication suite for Mac users (and others), trumping MS again as it can already mimic other accounts. Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Windows Live Mail Beta