Jul 6, 2011 09:56 GMT  ·  By

Getting better and faster with age, Windows Live Hotmail has celebrated its 15th birthday at the start of this week.

The latest release of Microsoft’s email service is no less than 10 times faster than its predecessor following an update rolled out recently, but is also sporting more features than ever, and thanks to Internet Explorer 9 it can hook deep into Windows 7 and deliver an app-like UX.

Dick Craddock, Group Program Manager, Hotmail stressed that it has been a busy year thus far for the team behind the email service, which is hard at work introducing new features at an accelerated pace to satisfy users.

“The first 15 years have been busy, and none more so than this past year; we’ve already had seven releases in 2011 – each filled with many new features,” he stated.

“Many of you have told us that you want to see Hotmail ship more features more often. We hear you loud and clear, and that’s definitely something we’ve already started this year with seven releases in the last six months – each one containing many new features for customers and often a lot more under the hood.”

And customers certainly seem to be taking advantage of the new Windows Live Hotmail features.

According to information from the Redmond company, in excess of 3 million aliases have already been created by leveraging a feature which enables users to create multiple email addresses for the same account and discard them when they’ve served their purpose.

Bridging Windows Live Hotmail with Facebook is another move from the software giant that proved successful, with 5 million users chatting with their social network friends from Microsoft’s email service.

“You have more proofs that help protect your Hotmail account from theft by helping verify that you’re the real owner of your account, and you can more quickly take back control in a situation where someone steals your identity,” Craddock added.

“Your emails from LinkedIn, Posterous and LivingSocial can now be Active Views and be a lot more interactive and up to date. Last month, nearly 200 million Active Views were delivered. Popular Outlook features like mouse and keyboard shortcuts, remembering custom fonts, and undeleting messages now work in Hotmail.”

On its 15th anniversary, Windows Live Hotmail also received a couple of new features, kicking the service’s calendar functionality up a notch.

Hotmail users will now be able to better schedule their appointments via the new mini-calendar, just as if they would be using Outlook.

In addition, a new “go to” feature streamlines navigation to email messages from a particular sender or received on a specific date.