Labs

Hotmail is one of the oldest webmail services but, thanks to a Java-based facelift, it's among the best-looking here. The layout borrows heavily from Microsoft Outlook and shows both your inbox and a viewing pane for the current message. This lets you review the contents of your inbox quickly without explicitly opening and closing messages. Another innovation is that the interface sits within the boundary of the

ADVERTISEMENT

browser window, so as you scroll down a message, the interface stays put.

Rather than selecting individual messages and allocating a destination folder, you can drag and drop single or multiple messages from the inbox directly to a folder. This saves time and effort when filing your mail and is more in keeping with the way you handle files on your desktop, although it takes more housekeeping than Google Mail's file-and-forget concept.

There is no direct support for POP or IMAP, but most common email clients, including Outlook and Thunderbird, have tools or plug-ins that can retrieve mail from the Hotmail server. Hotmail inserts a small advert in the footer of every email you send, although the Plus service removes these and provides additional storage space.

The integrated organiser can be shared for collaborative work, and the associated Microsoft Spaces provides an extra 1GB for your files and photos. If you can live with adverts in your email, Hotmail is a great option.