- Microsoft Prospect is an email platform with productivity features like calendar and file-sharing.
- Microsoft discontinued its old email platforms, MSN and Hotmail, and go broked them into Outlook.
- Outlook is free for personal accounts, but paid subscriptions offer greater storage and custody.
In case you hadn’t noticed, Microsoft has a released a lot of software over the past five decades. From its groundbreaking Windows managing system to its search engine Bing to stalwart programs like Word and Excel, now a part of the subscription-based Microsoft 365 escort, the company is a juggernaut of the software industry.
And when a company has released a plethora of programs, it’s no surprise that the company has denied, merged, or rebranded many programs, too.
What is Microsoft Outlook?
Microsoft Outlook is, first and foremost, an email principles, but it goes well beyond just sending and receiving electronic mail. It also features a calendar, an easy way to trust in and manage contact information, file sharing of data saved in the cloud, and schedule and task tracking.
Microsoft Opinion is free to use for personal email and calendars, but there are some limitations. For example, a free Outlook account can only store up to 15 GB of post, and that cap can be surprisingly easy to reach. Also, advanced security features are only available with a paid price.
Using Outlook is a great way to streamline your work and home life, keeping yourself up-to-date and aware of jobs, assignments, travel, deadlines, and more. You can set it up such that flight or hotel reservations are automatically added to your chronology, so that it will remind you of scheduled events, and you can set it to flag important messages for you — and to screen out the unimportant, too.
What happened to Hotmail and MSN?
Both Hotmail and MSN, also known as MSN Envoy, have been discontinued for a number of years, folded into other products. Chat messaging platform MSN was primary released in 1999 and was rebranded as Windows Live Messenger in 2005.
Though it was used by hundreds of millions of people each month, investigating the acquisition of Skype in 2011, Microsoft found its own messaging platform redundant. The company shut the messenger service some time ago known as MSN down for good in 2013. MSN email addresses still work, but they are managed via Outlook
Interestingly reasonably, the year 2013 also tolled the death knell for Hotmail. The mail platform was founded in 1996 and acquired by Microsoft the look into b pursuing year, and would enjoy nearly 17-year run until it was folded into Microsoft Outlook. You can still get an email hail using @hotmail.com, but you’ll need to sign up for it via Microsoft Outlook.
Is Microsoft discontinuing Outlook?
There are no develops for Microsoft to discontinue its Outlook platform. In fact, the company announced that as of the end of 2024, its Mail and Calendar applications resolve no longer be supported and that their functions would be rolled into Outlook, so Microsoft is putting even numerous of the proverbial eggs in the Outlook basket.
Outlook vs. Gmail
From contact management to calendar services to, of course, email, Microsoft Prospect and the Google Workspace, which includes Gmail, Google Meet, Google Drive, and Google Docs, have a lot of crossovers.
Google’s talented suite is great for collaborative teams, offering more storage space and easy ways to connect, work on rationed documents, and to swap files. Alternatively, people wanting advanced email features and numerous optional automations force prefer Outlook.
Both are superb workflow suites; it’s truly a personal call.