The new hotmail Outlook.com will it make me switch?

Outlook.com is the new hotmail (not the new hotness). Here is a mini review:

The interface is very clean, this is nice.

When I first logged in my inbox had approx 350 messages and all seemed to be spam. So I selected all and marked as junk. It took about 1.5 minutes to move it all to junk folder. This seemed too long.

I’m not complaining about the junk filter yet because my hotmail address is my dumping ground when signing up for sites and they require an email address. That is why everything in the inbox i considered junk.

Social Stuff with outlook.com

First email sent to me by Mel Aclaro showed nothing until I clicked “show content” or “I trust mel aclaro email”. Then I had to add Microsoft app to my facebook profile.

Looking at social stuff from contact/people area of outlook.com is neat. I wrote on Mel’s wall from outlook.com contact interface

Overall it’s a ‘meh’ , but then again I think all the addons for Chrome/Gmail/Google Apps are ‘meh’ as well. Posting to Mel’s wall from contact window was nice though. I can send a FB message from my email window w/o having to go to FB.

I’ve never been a fan of seeing social activity in my email. I’ve tried social plugins for gmail also but I turn it off. For Mel it at first only pulled in a post from FB on Sunday about Harvey Weinstein. So I guess it works but I don’t see the point of it.

Docs

Where/how do I upload a doc/spreadsheet/etc? Appears this is only for when people send me an attachment.

Video in email

Email a link to a youtube vid and it plays in a popup/lightbox type of viewer. Google Apps / Gmail plays in the message.

No difference really.

Overall I like the look. Will I switch? No

I use Google Apps for @yourlocaltech.com

If you want something similar to Google Apps on Microsoft Exchange then you will have to look at office 365. Microsoft lost me a long time ago on using Exchange. Going to take a lot for me to come back.

Do I think outlook.com is on par with gmail.com ?

Meh. It’s not enough for me to switch or to even think about.

If you are a current Hotmail/MSN/Live user then I think this would be  nice change to move to. But from Gmail? nah.

And for Maren:

Folders and Labels are the same thing. Here is a video about Labels in Gmail that may help.