Microsoft’s Hotmail Now Fully Phased out but Rebranded to Outlook.com

The US tech giant Microsoft has phased out Hotmail on Friday. According to Dick Craddock of Microsoft all customers of Hotmail have just been upgraded to Outlook.com. The first announcement of the completed rebranding was made by Craddock on Thursday via a blog post.

Free Hotmail e-mail service has been used by millions of people worldwide though its popularity has waned in the past few years. Now, Outlook is Microsoft’s bet against the other e-mail services that sort of buried Hotmail even while it was still alive.

Users will love it

The transition from Hotmail to Outlook was initiated in February of this year. The first phase involved testing of the transfer to Outlook. Hotmail has around 300 million active users, making the task daunting and definitely unprecedented. The mailbox updating alone reportedly required a workup on 150 million GB of data.

Craddock reports that the upgrade was done carefully such that every account user retains all the contents of his or her e-mails, as well as contacts, calendar and settings. Microsoft is rather excited of the move and Craddock assure users that they have done their best to make sure that Outlook provides an amazing experience for the users.

Synched, compatible, and easy to merge

Outlook is looking to be a promising default webmail service with top features which are comparable with other contemporary email services such as Gmail from Google. Outlook looks more impressive as well with a very much improved user interface. This new service is designed to be more in sync with services such as Bing and Skydrive. These are Microsoft’s search engine and cloud storage systems, respectively. And it may easily be merged with Facebook. It is also integrated with Skype. Mobile devices may also be configured to Outlook. It is compatible with iOs and Android devices as well as Windows Phone and Windows 8.

The Outlook webmail service is optimized for Google Chrome 17 and up, Internet Explorer 8 to 10, Safari 5.1 and Firefox 10 and higher. Though not optimized for Chrome 16, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 5 and 9, Safari 5.1 (Windows) and Safari 5 (Mac and Windows) it would still become functional. For other lower versions not listed here, it is not worth attempting at all because Outlook would simply not work.

On moving day

In the past months hotmail users have been sent warnings and notices prompting them of the upgrade. The account users would need to upgrade on their own, but when they do there is no going back from Outlook to Hotmail should they change their mind because Hotmail is officially dead. This was allowed when Outlook was in preview mode but not anymore. Clicking on the upgrade button will transfer all the content automatically and all the messages stored in the aging Hotmail service would be carried over automatically.

For those who are rather sentimental about their old Hotmail e-mail address, there is no need to fret. Outlook users can keep their old identity from days of yore. But those who want to say goodbye to Hotmail for good have ample opportunity to do so.