I still use a very old hotmail account I have registered about a decade ago, when hotmail is just Hotmail. Over these years, I have seen it transfrom from one initiative to another initiative. Now that not many people I am in constant touch with use that mail ID for talking to me, I login to that very rarely. This week, when I logged in, I found a new greeting at the place where I enter my ID: “Windows Live Hotmail”. (Not sure if I missed it during my previous logins or it is fairly new.) So I was just recalling some of the older names, like .net Hotmail and Passport Hotmail. Where did they go?

A quick googling of “Windows Live” made me see what it means, it is a new set of services that brings my online world together, as per the website. Its like putting things together, the mail, the messenger and the spaces. Interesting! Are they together for the first time?

Once I login, it still says I am with MSN hotmail. May be I still don’t have all those new “togetherness” services. :-).

Then I spotted that tiny little green box that made me switch to the Windows Live Hotmail. So I just went there. Now I see this new UI for the mail, full of colorful pictures (actually, they all are advertisements.) Most of these ads featured people who vigorously move their jaws, feet or other body parts to tell me something. But sorry folks, my audio is off. My Yahoo or Google interfaces don’t waste my bandwidth with pictures (especially Google) and rather help me get my messages faster and sooner.
Actually, the new interface is a switch to the Yahoo! style folder placement from the older tab style folder placement. Other than that, I didn’t see much difference, except for increased Ad activity.

Then after a few minutes, I figured out another small button. That one made me sign up for full feature Windows Live. I was told it requires a high bandwidth connection. This newer interface has less(er) ads. Looks more like Thunderbird in a browser. Let me try this for a few days (means a couple of logins.)