Microsoft has finally launched the consumer preview of the Metro edition of Hotmail that has been under development for a while now. We have already seen some leaked screenshots and now you can play with it yourself!

The biggest news is the rebranding. Microsoft is using Outlook.com for this new platform. We assume Microsoft would discard the Hotmail branding for Outlook which is insanely popular because of its software counterparts.

Microsoft developers have posted a long blog post highlighted the changes in this new platform designed for the modern web. Here is what they said:

If you’re a Hotmail customer and want to upgrade to the Outlook.com preview, just click “Upgrade” in the options menu of Hotmail. Your email address, password, contacts, old email, and rules will remain unchanged, and you can send/receive email from your @hotmail.com or @msn.com or @live.com address. You’ll experience it all in the new Outlook.com preview user interface. You can also add an @Outlook.com email address to your account if you want.
Using Gmail, Yahoo, or another email service? No problem - it’s easy to try the preview by going to http://www.outlook.com/. If you have a Microsoft account, just log in and get started. If you don’t, it’s easy to create a new account with an @Outlook.com email address. Then you can set up Gmail or your other email service to forward your mail to Outlook.com and import your contacts and messages by following these instructions . This will let you use both services for now, but we think that over time, most people will prefer Outlook.com.
Don’t have an email address? Go to Outlook.com and create a new one and you’ll be up and running.