Windows Live Mail Review

Ok, this is not a joke. No more April Fool's Day pranks. This a serious review for Windows Live Mail Beta, an innovative webmail system from Microsoft, that wants to replace the good old Hotmail.

But how can you be serious when you get this? Look closely, click on the image to enlarge it. This is Microsoft's Gmail-killer.



Ok, so the interface is messed up, the navigation system is not built with text links, or images, there's just some text that has onclick events, so when you go to the mouse over the text, the cursor doesn't change.

You can barely see your mail, the advertising is very close to the scrollbar (like the new Yahoo Mail) and sometimes comes on top of your content, the mail search doesn't work, the rich-text editor has flaws (you can't change the font size).

Of course, you have 2 GB mail space and a Ajax-based interface. But who cares when you actually can't work with this pre-alpha mail client. Fortunately, you have the option to switch to the classic interface and keep the 2 GB.

I tested Windows Live Mail on Windows XP with Internet Explorer SP2. If you try to open it with Firefox, you'll get an unfriendly message and then you'll have to select the classic view, because, as you know, Firefox is not powerful enough to render Windows Live Mail correctly.




To see for yourself, get an invitation from ideas.live.com.

Let's see my ratings:
Yahoo Mail Beta: 7/10
Gmail rating: 8.5/10
Windows Live Mail Beta: 4/10

Related:
Yahoo Mail Beta Review
The new Yahoo Mail will have obtrusive ads
5 fast ways to check your Gmail account

Update: I refreshed IE a couple of times and the interface seemed better, but what if I resize the page?

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