Gmail is king when it comes to free e-mail. The longer you use it, the more space you get. Further, you don’t have to worry about popping out an external hard drive with Gmail with all the storage provided that acts as an online backup. We’ve seen some Gmail accounts closing in on 12GB of storage! And it’s still free. There’s a new kid on the block, and it’s Microsoft’s new version of Hotmail due out by August.
Here’s what the new Hotmail has to offer:
- Integration with Facebook. You won’t have to log into Facebook – just log into Hotmail and you’ll be able to interact with your Facebook contacts and view updates. Gmail’s Buzz social networking is a dud so far.
- Mail threading is better than Gmail’s. The entire conversation is shown at once whereas Gmail is a bit convuluted. Plus, by default, the conversational view is turned off so you’re not forced to use this feature.
- Flexible mail interface. You can set up Hotmail with several different types of views similar to Outlook for easy production. Gmail is predetermined for you to view threads or conversations.
- Content viewing is included. Want to watch a Youtube video? No prob – you can watch it within Hotmail rather than going to another website. The same goes for other media.
That all sounds good. The take-home message here is that Hotmail will look like Outlook, integrated with Facebook, and can play media directly in an email. And remember, with Hotmail you can add folders for better organization whereas Gmail doesn’t offer that feature. However, Hotmail will need to offer larger storage and easy compatibility with the iPhone to be competitive. Well, it’s free so you can always test it when it comes out. We think the Outlook viewing feature alone is worth the test. The e-mail setup on this is straight-forward. Just log into Hotmail when it is released and fire away!
