Image: Outlook.com

You can stop feeling sorry for people with “hotmail.com” email addresses.

Microsoft is dumping the Hotmail service, bringing an end to those now-pitiful looking e-dresses that were once the zenith of tech savvy. Instead, those still hanging on to hotmail can be reached at Outlook.com. The idea is to bring the company’s email service more in line with its other offerings. Moreover, Microsoft hasn’t really done much with Hotmail in ages.

The new Outlook.com will not only do what Hotmail did, it will also have capabilities suited to the latest mobile technologies, from smartphones to tablets. The free service is now in a preview period but will eventually be available internationally for personal and business use. New computers with the Microsoft Office system will also be outfitted with Outlook.com.

Hotmail was introduced in 1996, eons ago by technology standards. It had about 324 million users as of June 2012. Outlook.com added another one million users in the first few hours after it was introduced, according to a tweet from Microsoft.

[via Wall Street Journal]