After it was announced a couple months ago,  I wrote a blog about the  "new" Hotmail, or should we say Windows Live Hotmail as it's now been re-branded.  (read)  Well, since that entry was published the updated service has launched and I've had a chance to try it out.

Here are my initial impressions.

Importing contacts from other webmail services

It's very easy.  After a few steps and just a couple of minutes everything was ported over from my Gmail account, and I literally mean everything.  At first I was a bit confused because when going through the contacts there were names there that didn't look familiar at all.  Then I realized it was grabbing addresses from messages that were in my inbox.  It's convenient and time consuming at the same time because if you don't want a certain contact you have to go through your address book and delete them but it does pick up the ones you've been meaning to save.

It also lets you import messages and calendar items.

Privacy Settings

Well, it looks like Microsoft has learned from Google and Facebook's recent privacy missteps.  When going through and entering your personal information, in each category it asks you who you want to have access to the data.  The choices are Just Me, Some Friends, Friends, My Friends And Their Friends, and Everyone (public.)

For my contact info I chose Friends.  But when it came to work and general info, I changed the settings to public.  And yes, I said "changed," meaning your settings are private by default!  Are you reading this Mark Zuckerberg?

Photo

This isn't technically just a "Hotmail" feature since you have access to photos from anywhere on Windows Live but using this feature in Hotmail is where it really shines.  There's this new thing called SkyDrive which is a file storage and sharing service which allows you to upload files to the computing cloud, then access them from a web browser.  No more attaching to the actual message itself.  Internet users have been able to do this for years using web albums such as Picasa and Flickr for photos or Dropbox or Google Docs for other files but it's never been so integrated into the e-mail service.

Oh, and one more thing.  Adding photos to the SkyDrive was the easiest thing EVER!  Just drag and drop from anywhere on your computer and they upload in seconds.

The only complaint that I have about Windows Live Hotmail is that once in while when I was trying to save something the service would go down but that may be just growing pains.  But coming from a company as big as Microsoft you wouldn't think that.  Perhaps it was my computer.

Part 2 of my review coming soon.