One of the popular email providers is Hotmail, and in preparation for Windows 8 Microsoft has decided to do a bit of renovation of their Hotmail net based mail programme and make some address changes.

The new design will seem quite familiar if you use Outlook for your e-mail and will make Hotmail seem cleaner and of course will have built-in access to social networks like Facebook, Google, Twitter and the business oriented LinkedIn.

Windows 8 (Photo credit: Andy_BB (On Vacation))

The design is suited to the so-called Metro-design which is used on the Windows phones and will also be the Windows 8 e-mailer.

So over the next couple of months if you are a Hotmail user you can expect to be moved to the new Outlook.com Service, and there are a number of new features such as separate folders for news, offers or social media updates,  with the messages placed automatically into their respective folders. These folders, according to Microsoft, typically accounts for up to 80% of the average e-mail content.

With the change comes access to SkyDrive and the web apps and Skype’s video-conferencing facility, so just in case you haven’t got a PC handy you are still able to use Word, Excel or PowerPoint from your phone or tablet.

From a practical point of view there is no change to your Hotmail address, that can still be used but you’ll see your mail displayed in the new Outlook design. On the other hand if you hurry you can start an Outlook.com address now with the same name you used for Hotmail, as there is no promise of holding your Hotmail name for Outlook.  One assumes that the ‘live.com’ email addresses will similarly be channelled through Outlook.com.

For our members of SeniorNet Kapiti we recommend you keep an eye out for a workshop on browser based E-mail programmes of which there are quite a lot these days, with different features, though essentially all for receiving and sending e-mails.