If you want to take the “upgrade” to Live Mail beta from Hotmail then you can do it right away. All you need to do is look for the link shown below in the sidebar of your hotmail account.

Give a click and you will get a page with a lot of information about the new service. I would advise that you check out my alternative review of the service (part 1, part 2) which suggests it is less of an upgrade than the Live Mail team do. Anyway next you need to click on the sign up link at the top right side of the screen.

Then agree to this agreement:

And that is it.

I think you will find when you click the link on this page you will instantly have you Live Mail account. See what you think, I am not a big fan - but you may like it. You may find the following instructions useful.

Degrading from Live Mail Beta

Login to your Live Mail account. And click Options in the top right.

Then look in the left hand pane for “Switch to MSN Hotmail”.

Now read this message from the team begging you to stick with the service. And ignore it - press “Switch Back”.

And that’s it.