Microsoft launched a preview of its new web mail interface today. I tried it out myself, because I was curious. Here are my thoughts.
new domain
If you want to use the new interface and you don't have a hotmail account, you need to register for a @outlook.com email address. Microsoft is following Google's @gmail.com and Apple's @icloud.com/@me.com as a new signature domain. Everyone knows that nowadays your email domain is a part of the first impression you make. Microsoft finally gave their customers a chance to feel fresh and modern again with their @outlook.com suffix.
fast interface
What I really like about the interface is speed. It's Metro-styled, so it will fit into Windows 8. It seems faster than Apple's iCloud, Yahoo!'s yahoo.com and even Google's Gmail interface. It's very usable on low broadband (which is something that both Apple and Google suck at). It's very simplistic, which is something I feel like a webmail interface should be (sorry Gmail, all those flags, labels and groups make me dizzy).
contacts, Skype
Even though I didn't play with the contacts too much, it seems capable of everything you need to do. Skype integration is pretty cool, but they're already late to this game since Microsoft should have used Skype better for over a year (they did pay a couple of billion dollars for it).
preview
It's just a preview, so we can be sure Microsoft will try to make it even better in the future. Let's just hope they won't pack it with useless features while trying to improve it.
My call is that is has a bright future. Try it out for yourself.