Back in December, I wrote about how Microsoft has made rather discreet upgrades to their free e-mail service, Hotmail. It was in preparation for its supposed transition into the new Windows Live Mail brand.

Three days ago, Microsoft have made a turn-around and decided not to push through with the upgrade of Hotmail into Windows Live Mail, rather they decided to stick with the Hotmail brand and renamed the up coming new service to “Windows Live Hotmail.”

For once Micosoft has listened to its customers and did them a favor. Or was it done to keep what’s left of their e-mail service’s user-base? Fearing that customers may get confused with the names and leave the service all together, they simply decided to keep the brand name that those who have chosen to stay behind had come to love, while others have left for better services offered by Yahoo! and Google.

Again the question that whether these changes and upgrades to the service would attract new users and win back old ones remains a big one. Will Hotmail catch up to Yahoo! Mail and Gmail?

• Hotmail breaks the 1GB upgrade silence (6)
• 1GB Hotmail launched silently (11)
• Windows Cloud – will Microsoft finally take Google head-on? (0)
• Microsoft is a dinosaur, the future is Chrome (3)
• Why my pc was never infected by viruses, worms and trojans from email attachments (5)

Alas, the guys from MSN have broken their silence have e-mailed Hotmail users that their storage space have been upgraded from 250MB to 1GB (which is the standard nowadays, I think).

What was good is even better

You want more storage? You got it—1 GB.

Soon you’ll be seeing your MSN® Hotmail® account change for the better as we make the transition to Windows Liveâ„¢ Mail. As part of this evolution, your Hotmail inbox capacity just increased from 250 MB to a full 1 GB—giving you more free space to stash messages and store photos, and requiring less deleting of items you’d rather save for later.

And more storage is just the beginning. Once the transition to Windows Live Mail is complete(highlights are mine), your benefits will include:

* A clean new design– choose your own colors and layout.
* 2 GB of storage – even more photos, more messages, more everything
* Enhanced security–color codes for suspicious e-mail.

The message was dated December 13, 2006 but we Hotmail users have been already aware of this upgrade as far back as last November when they made this upgrade in silence.

What’s interesting about this however, is the line that I highlighted above. So we’re still in the transition from Hotmail or MSN to Windows LIVE. Once that is complete, we Hotmail users would become automatic Windows LIVE MAIL users in the near future. So what else is new?

A 2GB storage space? Not so shabby, but GMail has already broken and left that mark and has almost reached the 3GB mark, right where Walla! mail is right now. This a bit snobbish attitude of mine probably stems from my lack of interest and enthusiasm in Windows LIVE and its components like LIVE Mail. Which I think has its roots from my bigger lack of interest in Windows Vista. But that is another story.

I sort of like Hotmail for what and where it is right now, which is not great as Aja once pointed out:

I remember using Hotmail the first years of my Web experience but dropped it due to Yahoo! Mail’s integration with Yahoo! Messenger, which I use frequently. But soon after I got hold of a Gmail invite, I switched totally and just left my Yahoo! Mail account for Web site sign ups and registrations [sort of like semi-spam mailbox]. And, now I use Gmail for my [actually, your] domain.

Hotmail was really left behind in this competition, but isn’t Windows Live Mail coming out soon?

Well said Aja, but Hotmail is still good though. Better now that it has been upgraded with a bigger storage space. Will transforming it to Windows LIVE Mail help it catch up to the competition? That remains to be seen.

• Hotmail will remain Hotmail, Live Hotmail that is (4)
• 1GB Hotmail launched silently (11)
• How does the Gmail for your domain works? (3)
• Windows Cloud – will Microsoft finally take Google head-on? (0)
• Microsoft is a dinosaur, the future is Chrome (3)