5GB for Hotmail, plus other enhancements

We have just released a further update to Windows Live Hotmail, and I'm definitely liking the new features:

  • Firstly - more space. Lots more actually: You now have 5GB of space to store your emails and contacts etc
  • "Out of office" feature that, just like Outlook, allows you to automatically respond to emails when you're on holiday for example.
  • Ability to forward email to another email account. Your choice whether you leave a copy of the email in your Hotmail inbox or not.
  • Skip the "today" screen and instead start up straight into your inbox.
  • Automatically dedup your contacts, including intelligent merging of contacts.

There's more, but these are the features that really stand out for me as being of great interest right away.