Overview

Formerly known as Windows Live Hotmail, Outlook.com is not only free but other offers "unlimited" space, alongside integration with SkyDrive.

New interface

Outlook.com has a completely new interface from the old Hotmail. Much like Google's popular web-based service Gmail, Outlook.com's important folders are located on the left of your screen. Everything from documents, flagged emails, photos and shipping updates are located under the "Quick views" main folder. The more traditional and expected folders for your inbox, junk mail, drafts, and sent messages are also situated to the left.

At the top of your Outlook.com screen is a dynamic tool bar that will change depending on the content you're currently viewing. Chat is also integrated with your Microsoft Live and Facebook contacts, making it a convenient way to keep in touch with friends and family while simultaneously accessing your email.

Unfortunately, there are no right click options in a few places, notably the People and Calendar sections, which might present frustrations for some users.

Conclusion

Overall, Outlook.com is a great improvement on Hotmail's outdated interface. It's still playing catch-up to Gmail though in a lot of different ways. While the chat integration and easy to use contact management system are huge pluses, it's unlikely to sway hardcore Gmail users away from a service that offers a great Priory Inbox, and integration with Google Plus, as well as a myriad of other Google services.

Outlook.com is a vastly improved upgrade to a popular web-based email service that most former Hotmail users will undoubtedly appreciate.

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Web-based email accounts were once looked at as second class, but with the arrival of Gmail that began to change, and today it's probably the the email account to have.

Unlike other web email apps, Gmail has a very minimal and ad-free homepage. When you sign in, you immediately see your inbox, instead of having to click through to it, as with Hotmail. The left bar shows your email folders and contacts. If you choose to be signed in to Google Chat, your online contacts will also appear here, and you can chat to them without leaving Gmail.

Emailing is, of course, fast and reliable, with excellent spam filters to keep your inbox clean. The settings in Gmail are second to none; you can turn on keyboard shortcuts, allow images to be shown automatically or not, set a signature and even an out-of-office auto reply. There are lots of themes too, so if minimal isn't your thing you can brighten Gmail up a lot!

Offline allows you to access Gmail even if you can't get online, while Yahoo!, Hotmail and other mail services can be imported and integrated into your Gmail inbox. There's also a great area called Labs, which is full of new experimental features that you can try out.

The only thing Gmail doesn't do is drag and drop, which you can use to file your mails in some other services. However, it is still the ultimate email web app. When you add in the integration with the other excellent Google web apps, you have an incredible service.

Gmail offers user-friendly and customizable email, which makes the service streets ahead of the competition.

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Like Microsoft's Hotmail, over the past few years, Yahoo! Mail has been playing catchup in terms of features with Gmail. Currently, Yahoo! Mail is a functional email service.

It comes in Classic and New versions. Classic is just more old fashioned and the mail homepage is fairly static, while the New version is more active, faster and has a cleaner design.

Yahoo! Mail gives you some additional applications, like chat and a calendar, and some provided by partner companies. For example, you can get 1 GB of free storage space by signing up for a ZumoDrive, which will then appear as a tab on your Yahoo! Mail homepage.

Yahoo! Mail has improved a lot recently, but it's a bit untidy, and doesn't quite have the speed or usability of a Gmail account

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Many of us today have too may email and social media accounts, meaning our browser is full of tabs before we've even started looking at the web! Threadsy attempts to solve this by integrating them. The services supported are Gmail, Yahoo! Mail (US only), Hotmail (US only), AOL, Mobileme, IMAP, Facebook and Twitter.

Threadsy is very easy to set up, and you'll have multiple emails and social networks feeding into it immediately. The page is sensibly split into 'inbound' and 'streams'. Facebook updates and tweets appear in the latter, while email, Facebook messages and Twitter mentions get parked in the former.

The Threadsy system works very well, as long as you don't have too much stuff. A fast-moving stream will mean you miss more than usual, and four or five sources of messages 'inbound' can get overwhelming. Also, you will see emails faster, for example, on the Gmail site than on Threadsy.

As long as you don't overload it, Threadsy is a good looking and functional way of bringing your communication together.

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If you've ever needed to send a friend or family member a username, password or other important information, you've probably considered the security risk of doing so via text or regular email. OneShar.es provides a perfect solution by allowing you to share confidential information privately and securely.

OneShar.es doesn't require registration of any kind. Instead, it simply lets you type in your message of 1000 characters or less. Once done, it will generate a link that you can send to whoever you want to receive the message. OneShar.es also allows you to copy the link to a clipboard for convenience.

This link is good for one click only. That means if you accidentally click it yourself, you won't be able to send it to anyone else. Alternatively, if whoever you send it to refreshes the page, the message will be lost as well. While this ensure security, it also requires caution on the part of the receiver so they don't end up deleting the message before they've read it.

OneShar.es is a great solution that lets you send private information securely online.

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