Hotmail Wave 4 gets new features like Starring items as well as displaying messages in conversations. Thus, Microsoft fulfills its promise to watch closely what users like in competitive services, like Google’s web mailer.
- Windows Live Mail supports flagging messages for easy finding already since Wave 3. However, when you flagged a message in the desktop client, your changes would not synchronize to the Hotmail servers but only be stored locally. This is going to change in Wave 4, as support for flagged messages is going to be added to the Windows Live Hotmail web mail service as well.
- Furthermore, Hotmail and Live Mail both take a peek at their bigger brother Outlook, as viewing messages in conversations will be possible. This should solve some of the usual Inbox clutter…
- Checking for all unread or flagged e-mails is an easy task in Windows Live Mail with Quick Views. Imagine a Quick View to be like a Search Folder in Outlook: it displays items from other folders, but with a different filter. With Wave 4, this feature is coming to Windows Live Hotmail, too.
- And forget about Hotmail Today: it will be discontinued. You will have to use Windows Live Home for its features.
Sounds good? What do you think?
Also, is the conversation view like a gmail type conversation threading? Or does it resemble outlook’s grouping by subject?