Hotmail update reaches just one percent of users

Microsoft admits sluggish rollout, but says it's worth the wait.

The latest version of Windows Live Hotmail has only been made available to one per cent of its customers, despite the company previewing it over six weeks ago.

Rollout was started two weeks ago to a single ‘cluster’ of customers. Each cluster is made up of a mix of customers from around the world so Windows Live cannot predict when individual accounts will be upgraded.

Currently, a few million customers have the new Hotmail, with rollout continuing slowly to allow its “engineers a chance to study the new software running at scale with real customers”, according to Microsoft product manager Mike Schackwitz.

He revealed in a blog post that the Windows Live team has made a “few tweaks” to Hotmail based on response from the initial rollout, and expects to make more once it extends the release of the new software to additional clusters of customers later this week.

Overall, Windows Live is expecting it will still take a few weeks to finish rollout to its entire customer base.

In response to the announcement made on the blog, one customer posted: “It’s been two months I am [sic] waiting to use this software.....cannot wait anymore.”

Mike Schackwitz at Windows Live wrote: “For those of you who already have the new Hotmail, we hope you like it, and we want your feedback. For those of you who don’t have it yet, fear not! It’s coming soon, and we think it will be worth the wait!”

The new version of Windows Live Hotmail allows for integration with the online capabilities of Office 2010 and provides tools to better manage social network updates.

Its new SkyDrive storage capabilities will allow users to send up to 200 photos, each up to 50MB in size, in a single email and preview incoming photos as a slideshow.