Microsoft Live Mail Hits A Snag

Microsoft Corp. has apparently hit some rough road with Windows Live Mail Beta, which is the eventual replacement for MSN Hotmail.

People accessing the Web mail service since Friday have received a message saying Microsoft had "hit a couple of bumps with our most recent release." In place of the Live Mail client, which is similar to Microsoft's Outlook email client for the desktop, visitors got the "classic" Hotmail interface.

"This is all new stuff we're doing, so we appreciate your patience while we work the kinks out," the Live Mail message said.

A Microsoft spokeswoman on Monday confirmed that the problems continued, but declined to give further details, pointing instead to a company blog by Live Mail program manager Ben Poon. The blog hadn't been updated since Friday.

The problems affected users of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers.