Microsoft's Hotmail might get an update

DEVELOPER OF IFFY SOFTWARE Microsoft has seemingly lost faith in its own capabilities by taking a pedestrian attitude to rolling out an updated version of Hotmail.

The popular email service was given a new lick of paint in a bid to keep up with Google's cloud based Gmail. Mike Schackwitz, a Vole close to the matter said that the firm has shifted less than one per cent of existing Hotmail users over to the new version.

Those looking forward to getting their mitts on new Hotmail features will be disappointed to learn that, according to Schackwitz, "there is no way of predicting exactly when your account will get the new Hotmail." It certainly seems like Microsoft is on top of the matter, doesn't it?

Perhaps we're being a bit too harsh on Microsoft, though. After all Hotmail's server software does run on hundreds of servers worldwide and has tens of millions of accounts, but it's hard to see how a software company with enterprise aspirations can seemingly think it is perfectly acceptable to deprecate its software engineering talent by saying that it will make changes after an initial roll-out to improve its "ability to monitor the site or make the rollout itself go more smoothly." Hey ho, no need to stress with internal testing. If it goes south after all, it's only paying punters that are affected.

But Schackwitz backed off from his earlier comment about account updates, saying that the roll-out will "take a few weeks to finish". Suddenly we've gone from an inability to predict to just a matter of weeks. He must have tweaked some settings after the roll-out of his first blog post.

In the meantime those frustrated at Microsoft's progress with its Hotmail service can always try Gmail, which seems to be in a constant state of evolution. µ