Windows Live Hotmail vs. Gmail: Which one is better?

The new Windows Live Hotmail is here but I still love using Gmail for various reasons. Mashable has a very good post on the comparison of the two. Let’s see where Gmail stands one step ahead of Windows Live Hotmail and where it looses ground to it. 1. Live Hotmail features pull-down menus for various applications and you can drag and drop messages into your folders. AJAX-based inbox has made it very much like a desktop application. In case of Gmail, text links are used to access most of the features thereby enabling faster loading. So, I am pretty impressed by the Gmail interface rather than that of Live Hotmail. 2. While Windows Live Hotmail offers 2GB of storage, you get 2.849GB of e-mail storage in Gmail. Anyway, Yahoo Mail is the leader in this case. 3. Windows Live Hotmail comes with an integrated calendar that you can use within the interface while the Google calendar hasn’t been integrated into Gmail. At this point, Live Hotmail looks to be a better option. 4. Live Hotmail follows an Outlook type of organizing message sin folders while Gmail follows a web2.0 style where you can assign multiple tads to your messages. Gmail once again turns out to be winner. 5. Live Hotmail puts Gmail to shame when it comes to personalization. It offers a variety of themes, custom font and background colors. 6. Chat integration is far better in Gmail than that of Live Hotmail where you can see the contacts (online or not) if they are using MSN messenger. 7. Gmail goes for contextual advertising while Live Hotmail has big ads on the top thereby increasing the load time. Full points to Gmail here. But, the one thing that both the services miss is the lack of RSS functionalities. Let’s see who comes out with full RSS features first of all. Anyway, from the comparison, it’s pretty clear that Gmail scores good points over Live Hotmail.