Windows Live Mail is, by all means, just the latest pit stop of Microsoft's web-based email service. And at the same time, the Redmond company will not stop the evolution of Windows Live Hotmail at this point in time or at this stage. Microsoft has already revealed the existence of plans to continue to grow the email service, and in this context, 2008 will be the year when the next steps in the evolution of Windows Live Hotmail will begin to be implemented. But unlike other services that are original to Windows Live, Hotmail is not.

During the development process of Windows Live Hotmail, Microsoft referred to the service as Windows Live Mail and, at that time, positioned it as a parallel offering to the traditional MSN Hotmail. Ellie Powers, program manager, Windows Live Hotmail, revealed that all the way back in 2004, when work began on what was back then Windows Live Mail, Microsoft planned to write a new code base for the email service, with the intention to abandon MSN.

"Unfortunately, MSN Hotmail did not allow us to address significant customer needs, such as support for certain languages and accessibility for folks with different visual and motor disabilities. We also got complaints from many customers about MSN Hotmail being too hard to use. We spent a long time building a new version of Hotmail that the majority of our customers like better, and we want to focus our engineering team's efforts on the new system. It is a bit of a change, but Windows Live Hotmail has a lot of the same functionality as MSN Hotmail", Powers stated.

Windows Live Hotmail was both rebranded and introduced in its final version earlier this year. The service is hosted under the Windows Live brand umbrella and signals the next generation of offerings from Microsoft's cloud that dropped in the second half of this year. Currently, Windows Live Hotmail is offering its users no less than 5 GB of storage and close integration with the Outlook and Windows Mail desktop clients, via the DeltaSync protocol.

"Before we started working on Windows Live Hotmail, we used to update MSN Hotmail a lot, so it would change, too. If you liked MSN Hotmail, you may prefer the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail. Make sure you're using it by going to Options (or Options --> More options from the full version). Look at the first option on the page to see if you're currently using the full or classic version", Powers added.