Great news Windows Live Hotmail Users and Fans, the Windows Live Hotmail Team have launched a new update to Windows Live Hotmail.  This newly released update features many new features and improved performance which people will be really happy to see, some of my most looked forward features have been included like duplicate contact merging, vacation replies and an option to turn off the msn today screen so you can jump straight into your inbox, though it would be cool if we could personalise this that is so for example I could see my calendar first! 🙂

Anyhow here’s the list of changes as mentioned by Ellie Powers-Boyle a program manager for Windows Live Hotmail who posted the list of changes on the Windows Live Hotmail Team Blog.

Performance: The Windows Live Hotmail Team have been hearing you loud and clear across the world: speed is one of the most important aspects of a web-based email service. So this time around they have spent more time in this release identifying what parts of the product are slowest and fixing those.

Quality of Service: The last release went quite smoothly, and yet again have the Hotmail Team been continuing to monitor the live site to make sure that their providing e-mail that is reliable.

More storage: Just when you were wondering how you’d ever fill up 2 or 4 GB of mail, you’ve now been given even more storage. Free users will get 5 GB and paid users will get 10 GB of Hotmail storage.

Mail retention changes: Over the next few months the team will be increasing the amount of time that they leave messages in your junk and deleted items folders.

Contacts de-duplication: Do you have five different entries for the same person in your Contacts? Well not anymore you wont. Windows Live Hotmail is the first webmail service to roll out contacts de-duplication. If you get a message from me for example Darren Straight and click add contact but there’s already a Darren Straight, Windows Live Hotmail will let you know and let you add my other e-mail address to your existing Darren Straight contact entry. As quoted from Ellie “We’re just trying to be smarter to make your life easier and faster.” There’s also a wizard you can run to clean up your existing duplicate contacts.

Show content more easily: Hotmail blocks images and links in messages from unknown senders for your protection from spammers and phishing scams. Now you can click directly on the gray square or link to decide if you want to show content in a message. (It’s still not a good idea to show content, especially images, in messages from spammers. Just loading the images in a spam lets them know that you’re reading their e-mails.)

Spam-fighting: The Team have made it possible to report phishing attacks like those fake bank notices or fraudsters who want your checking account number so they can supposedly make a deposit. Just click report phishing if you think you’ve found a dangerous scam. In the junk folder, click not junk to help train our filters. Every mail you report does help make their spam filter smarter, but fighting spam takes constant vigilance. Spammers always find a new trick whenever the team thwart their old tricks.

Right-to-left languages: Support for Hebrew and Arabic is now out of beta! If you speak these languages or want to see Hotmail in a totally new way, go to Options and change your language. Thea Team fixed a lot of bugs for users of Hebrew and Arabic, so they hope the whole UI works better for you now.

More space for your email, a.k.a. smaller header: The Team heard you asking for more space for your mail, so they shrunk the header in this update. 🙂

Forwarding messages: You can now forward mail from your Hotmail account to other accounts. For now, if you have a free account, you can only forward your mail to other Hotmail accounts. (Paid accounts get more choices.) This is great idea if you have a few different addresses and want to consolidate your mail.

Cobranding: This is what is referred to as showing the logo of an organization for whom Microsoft and the Windows Live Hotmail Team are hosting email. Hotmail is currently hosting e-mail for universities (and a few ISPs) around the world, so the team shows their logos in Hotmail.

Accepting meeting requests: If you receive a meeting request, such as one sent from Outlook, you can now click accept and have it added to your Calendar. This had existed for years in MSN Hotmail, but now the team have added it to Windows Live Hotmail now.

Vacation replies: Now Hotmail can automatically tell your friends why you haven’t written them back in a few weeks.

Classic version jump to page: In the classic version, the team have made it easier to jump to different pages of mail. This will be very handy as you grow into your new 5 GB or 10 GB account.

And finally… Drumroll please… this one is probably going to be a big hit with a lot of you out there in blog land (me for one! :D).

You can now turn off the MSN Today page (if you want to). If you’d rather see your inbox immediately upon login, you have the option to turn off the page of MSN news (called the Today page). The choice is yours.

And there you have it, please give a big round of applause to the Windows Live Hotmail Team and all the nagging beta testers! 😛