Agreed. My gut instinct on any @hotmail.com mail outside my address book is to mark as spam.

Agreed. If they have managed to create a new webmail system that is competitive and a vast improvement over the old hotmail they would be enormously foolish to hitch it to the incredibly stigmatized and debased brand name that is hotmail rather than launching it under a new name (with easy-peasy free "upgrades" for all existing hotmail users).

I agree. Also, nobody will ever wear plaid shorts again!

Hotmail? ah ha ha ha hahahahaha! ROTFLMFAO! You mean that stigma? :)

At this point, it's only real utility would be as a secondary disposable address. But given Hotmail's tendency in the past to delete any account you didn't login to every two weeks or so, I wouldn't even trust it to that.