Lovable outlook.com from Microsoft

Gmail has become synonyms with webmail since it started and after that people forgot that any other webmail providers even existed. And it appeared as if Gmail is only choice left in market for webmail till Microsoft launched one of their best innovations called outlook.com. Don’t confuse, it is not MS Outlook, it is outlook.com. A fresh look to the earlier webmail solution called hotmail. Do you remember hotamail.com? Yep! You are right, Sabeer Bhatia’s hotmail. But outlook.com is not just an upgrade of hotmail.com but it is a real solution for today’s demand of online mailing solution in all. It has got many more features than Gmail but lacks some as well. So here are few points where outlook.com scores over Gmail.

• Look n Feel and User Experience

The look and feel of outlook.com is absolutely wonderful. Segoe font looks nice and clean. As my friend Richa says, look of outlook.com is soothing to the eyes, simple and beautiful. User interface is more like a MS Outlook 2007 (desktop mail client) and the later versions. But it is very easy to use and navigate. Whereas, Gmail interface looks very crowded and crammed with too many options than I need.

• Virtually unlimited storage space for mails

Gmail started offering 10 GB space for free accounts. But outlook.com is offering virtually unlimited space. As the size of your mails increases, they increase the storage of your account. They however, do mention in their help that ‘If your inbox grows too fast, you might not be able to send or receive any more messages’. But there is no explanation for what ‘grows too fast’ really means. So keep your fingers crossed. You can attach or receive files up to 25 MB in one mail, which is the same in Gmail as well. But the interesting parties that if you want to send files more then 25 MB then in Gmail you have to upload it to Google drive (up to 5 GB free) and send the download link in mail. But in outlook.com if you are attaching more than 25 MB file in a mail, it automatically gets uploaded to your sky drive (up to 7 GB free) and download link gets embedded in your mail.

• Privacy Protection

In Gmail whatever ads you see when you are reading mail are related to the text contained in your mail. That means Gmail actually reads your mail and uses that information to show ads matching your mail content. But essentially Gmail reads your mail and potentially that is a big risk to your privacy. Microsoft is promising that outlook.com will not read your mail or engage in text-mining as it is called still offering this service for free with virtually unlimited storage. That doesn’t mean they will not show ads, but these ads will be more of general types and based on information that Microsoft has about you as a person. So there is a higher chance that your mail content will not be spoofed and your privacy will be protected in outlook.com

• Login with Temporary Password

If you have registered your mobile number with outlook.com account then you can sign in using single use code (password). Outlook.com will send you a single sign in code as text message on your mobile. Using this code you can login only once. This is a very useful feature if you are logging from public computer or a cyber cafe. So your real password remains safe and you can still access your account.

• Smart Automatic Categorization 

This is one of most innovative features given in outlook.com. Outlook.com searches for common mails and groups them together in a virtual folder like Facebook alert mail, yahoo Group mail etc. This is very useful in case you are using mobile phone to check your mails. If you receive many less important mails, they occupy your inbox space and make it more difficult to view the important ones. Since mobile screens are small you will always like to see important mails on top rather than some alerts. This smart auto categorization helps you in this. Though there is a small glitch, some of your important mails might get categorized in the less important folder. Gmail has provided filters for this but they need to be created manually.

• Social Networking at fingertips

Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are integrated in outlook.com. This is not something innovative but very useful and Gmail lack this. You can login into your outlook.com account and chat with Facebook friends, write to their wall or you can reply to status updates on Twitter while remaining in outlook.com.

• Search Based on Email Size 

Though this feature appears insignificant, believe me, this is the feature that is badly missing in Gmail. If you receive mail with huge attachments and you want to delete the bulky ones first, Gmail disappoints you on this. No such filter is available in Gmail. So, good job done by outlook.com team!

• Recover Permanently Deleted Mails

In outlook.com you can recover mails even if you’ve deleted them permanently from trash. Though, I am not sure mails how old can be recovered using this feature because they say ‘Lost a message? When you recover deleted messages, we bring back as many as we can’. So again the question ‘as many as we can’ mean how old is not answered.

• Create an Email Alias

This is a very interesting feature given in outlook.com. You can create as many as alias email ids with your account for various uses. For eg: if you want to register email on some group or blog site then instead of giving your primary email address you can create an alias id for the same. This will make sure that you get registered on that site and your primary account does not get full with unnecessary updates from that site. Also you don’t have to manage many accounts for same. Mail received on this alias id can be redirected to your inbox or whatever folder you want them to be stored in. You can delete this alias once your job is done or you can even change the alias login id without loosing mails received on that id. You can also use this for creating email ids like your primary email id, something like firstnamelastname@outlook.com (period or full stop / plus sign is not allowed in primary email id in outlook). You can also create alias id like firstname.lastname@outlook.com (period or full stop or plus sign is allowed in the alias id), so that the mail sent on either of these ids will be received in you outlook.com inbox. 

• Send Mail Using HTML and CSS

This is an amazing feature if I wish to customize your mails while sending. You can create mail in the HTML format and put the HTML code in outlook.com mail editor. This is very useful feature if you wish to send promotional mails with lots of images embedded in the mail content or you have tables in you mail body. You can even give background images or colour like HTML page. This is completely missing in Gmail.

Only disappointment in this preview version of outlook.com is that the UI is not consistent across all the four tabs (Mail, People, Calender, Skydrive). ‘Mail’ and ‘People’ tabs are excellent, very beautiful and nicely done, whereas ‘Calender’ and ‘Skydrive’ tabs look like they belong to a completely different application. Even the position and appearance of common buttons and links get changed. I hope Microsoft will change this in the final release.

Finally quoting General Manager of Windows Live and Internet Explorer Mr. Brian Hall, ”If you’re a heavy Google Docs or a Google+ user, then Gmail is probably for you. Otherwise, if you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Office, then Outlook [outlook.com] is better.”

Gadgetdost Verdict:gadgetdost thinks that it is a great idea to shift your mail account to outlook.com to experience the innovative webmail solution from Microsoft and yet not worry about receiving email from your existing mail accounts.