Microsoft claims Hotmail updates bring instant email

EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER Microsoft has claimed that updates to its Hotmail service make it 10 times faster.

Following last year's major overhaul, Microsoft said that further optimisations to Hotmail have resulted in overall wait times for users dropping significantly. The firm claims that in December 2010 it would take the average user 3.3 seconds to open an email message, but now that has come down to just 0.18 seconds. Other tasks such as deleting a message or requesting to compose a new message have seem similar speedups, the Vole claimed.

According to Microsoft's Dick Craddock, this impressive turn of speed came from improved data caching, meaning message lists are now stored in the web browser. Pre-loading of emails and replies is also done to reduce time, with Craddock saying, "Our analysis also showed that when customers open an email message, they're very likely also to view the one that follows it."

The most visible update to Hotmail is that users won't have to wait for confirmations from the server before the user interface updates. Craddock said that this manifests itself in the ability to delete an email and see it immediately removed from the list. According to Craddock, "This approach also makes the client code more resilient to spikes in server activity and improves performance for users who have low bandwidth/high latency connections."

According to users commenting on Craddock's blog, it seems Microsoft's research and development efforts have paid off, with many users claiming to have noticed a new turn of speed from Hotmail.

Microsoft has invested significant effort to revamp Hotmail. Last year the US software company was lambasted for the stop-start rollout that included the firm blaming high contrast screens for the service's failings. However the latest updates tend to suggest that Microsoft's efforts have lately proven to be far more successful in the Vole's bid to keep its aging webmail service within sight of Google's Gmail. µ