Microsoft Weblog (disclaimer: this is a b5media blog) notes that Hotmail’s new rev, codenamed “Kahuna” is getting closer to being launched (“sometime next year”). It quotes PC World, which says:

The virus, phish detection and spam management tools will be housed in a new ‘InfoBar’, and the Calendar has a more Outlook-like feel. Microsoft has also made a more powerful Contacts area, simplified new contact management and added auto-recipient complete (for when you have matching contacts in your contact database) for new e-mail. Mail creation has also been enhanced, with Rich Text Editing features. Baseline storage space for the free service will be 2GB

I’ve seen the new service, and it’s all that and more. In fact, if the anti-spam was decent enough, it would be good enough to make me give up Outlook. I wouldn’t. But it’s that good.