I am not at all impressed with Windows Live Mail. Why did they get rid of features like the check box next to email. There is no way to mass delete things from the InBox. I am swithing back to classic Hotmail. Lame.

Windows Live Mail is slower, difficult to handle when it comes to deleting emails and a mess when it comes to trying to do a search, sorting or any sort of clean-up. They need to at least add an easy way to delete multiple emails at once and an ability to jump from page to page (i.e., page 5 to page 25) without going in strict sequential order (i.e., page 2 to page 3, page 3 to page 4, page 4 to page, etc.).

Microsoft really screwed up on most of their "live" products. Google is miles ahead of them on almost every front. I wish they'd just devote all their resources to fixing Vista instead of making all these new services most people are not waiting for. I was in early on most of the live beta products and simply gave up on them.

Well, it's still in Beta I guess. I have to admit - I've flipped back and forth on the Yahoo Beta and, for now, I'm staying in the WL Beta. Both products need some work. I haven't paid close attention: is there a way for you to make your wishes known to the development teams? Most betas have a "report bugs" link...maybe they also have a "feature wish" link (e.g., Don't take away the stuff I liked about the old version!)

The problem I've seen with most of MS's recent betas is their size. I remember being on betas of large products and only having 100-200 testers, and being able to communicate directly with the product managers and developers. Nowadays they let 1000's of people be beta testers, many without any real knowledge or experience with testing.

I agree this version is terrible. But how do you switch back?

Click Options...

Choose inbox layout: Windows Live Mail Experience or Classic Hotmail View
Select whether to use the Windows Live Mail Experience or the Classic Hotmail view. Classic Hotmail will work better for people who use screen readers.

Beta opt-out
Stop using Windows Live Mail.

I am still using it but in Classic Version. I may opt out all together though.

The Windows and Yahoo betas are both awful. I switched both back to the originals.

I guess the idea for Microsoft is to make it look like Outlook, so if you're familiar with that, you won't have too much grief.

In Live Mail, you can hold down Shift to highlight mulitple messages and delete them in one go. Right click on messages also offer you some functions.

I must be in the minority, I've no issues with the new look. In fact, I hated the old 'classic' Hotmail interface. Live Messenger has some nifty features too.

like most things MSFT, 1.0 sucks A. 2.0 will be a competitor and 3.0 will wipe out the competition.

:-)

As for google, they do some things nicely of course, but they are 3-5-not even in the same league as their competitors when it comes to anything outside of search.

As for page views and users, Mail they are 4th, mapping they are 3rd, news they are 10th, finance site they are "not even measurable"

I was pretty surprised to see the latest rankings from June 2006.

of course we sort of know this since 98.9% of their revenue still comes from search.

When you quit the beta there is a questionnaire that lets you indicate why you're quitting and to submit a free-form reply.

Sign in at ideas.live.com

Go to the Live Mail page from there, and you can provide Feedback or get support from there.

I've used the Live Messenger support, and they were quite responsive.

Its rubbish and harder to read. Not so easy on the eye!

Have opted out too

The check-box feature is back now - someone must be listening...

The check box was never a problem (as long as you can a teensy weensy paradigm shift as far as web apps go). What you can do, just like in Outlook is:

i) Select first message in list that you want to delete or move.
ii) Shift and select last message in list you want to delete and move.

At this point, all the messages you want selecting have been selected .

Edited to add Oops, as already pointed out by Leumas above

As others have said above though, it isn't really an improvement on Hotmail Classic and is light years behind Google who have put the overall usability of their own product before making it look pretty.

BTW, the successor to Outlook Express would appear to be Windows Live Mail Desktop. It still has a tendancy to crash and burn at the moment though.