(Image source: Microsoft )

BY EVAN THOMAS

ANCHOR LAUREN ZIMA

Microsoft has overhauled its webmail offering — Hotmail.com is out, Outlook.com is in.

In its blog post , Microsoft details a slimmed-down header, more space devoted to messages, and no ads in sight. Thanks to Microsoft Exchange, Outlook.com synchronizes mail and calendars across multiple devices and platforms, and the contact list is connected to social networks to deliver tweets, updates etc. straight to a user’s inbox.

Wired dug through some of Outlook.com’s features , and came away impressed — Outlook will automatically pull photos and video from emails and external sites into a viewer, right in your inbox. And in a Googly twist, users can edit and share Microsoft Office documents right in their browsers.

It’s a solid client — but The Next Web says it will only get traction if the user base decides to adopt it .

“What will be interesting to see is if Microsoft can convince a large portion of the hundreds of millions of Hotmail users to voluntarily move to the service. At some point, they won’t have a choice, but for now they will be allowed to keep the traditional Hotmail if they so prefer.”

And that says nothing of users outside Microsoft’s mail ecosystem. Gizmodo doesn’t know if the admittedly polished experience will be enough to cause an exodus from Gmail .

“Hotmail is a cursed word in tech… Many of us have been using the same Gmail account since the middle of the Bush administration, and that inertia, combined with the toxic connotations of Hotmail, will make any switch a huge psychological task.”

But somebody somewhere is switching, according to Outlook.com’s Twitter feed . Six hours after the service went live, it had gained a million new users.

Outlook.com is currently in the testing stages. Users who want a preview can upgrade from their existing Hotmail addresses, and fresh users can sign up at Outlook.com.