I read the article and signed up. Here's why Hotmail still sucks:

Tried importing my 1500+ contacts from gmail and hotmail said it can only accept up to 1500.

Also, even though you can 'add people' to your hotmail/msn network using Google's oauth and contact APIs I'm ironically forced to import contacts using an Outlook CSV file. Why the inconsistency there?

WARNING: During the 'add people' wizard I almost accidentally sent out 1000+ MSN live invites to my google contact list. Maybe MSFT confused the words 'viral' and 'virus'..?

Finally, my brand new hotmail account feels utterly sluggish next to my 6 year old gmail account.