Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/09/24/hotmail_updates_again/

Microsoft splatters Hotmail with even more updates

That's a lotta lipstick

By Kelly Fiveash

Posted in Software, 24th September 2010 11:28 GMT

Microsoft has plastered Hotmail with yet more updates, after customers continued to complain about the firm’s recent shaky overhaul of its free web email service.

The software vendor didn’t want to draw too much attention to those gripes, by instead saying it had responded to user “feedback”.

But since the re-launch of Hotmail this summer, the company has repeatedly applied patches to the live service.

Many have reasonably complained that Microsoft failed to adequately test the product before rolling it out to all its customers.

Worse still, the firm sunk plenty of ad cash into the makeover – which clearly showed that MS had lots of faith in its new-look Hotmail at release in June.

Sadly, Hotmail customers have struggled to agree with Microsoft’s enthusiasm about the service. The result? Updates aplenty.

“We’ve kept ourselves busy this summer,” said the company’s Hotmail group program manager Dick Craddock.

“Following this release, you may have noticed a string of smaller updates. Some were planned, like push email, calendar, and contacts through Exchange ActiveSync, but others were the results of feedback we received and acted on during the rollout.

“We put a lot of time and effort into careful planning, but we also recognise that with any release, we can improve, so we do our best to listen closely and respond actively to feedback.”

Yet more features were pummelled into Hotmail yesterday.

Microsoft began a worldwide push of its 10GB photo-sharing tool in its SkyDrive cloud storage service, which is bolted onto Hotmail, yesterday. Previously the feature was only made available to US customers.

The full list of tweaks can be viewed here. ®