Outlook.com Premium Arrives - Get Your Personalized Email Now

Back in April, a Premium version of Microsoft's Outlook.com surfaced, and now it has been made official. For the rate of $50 a year, Outlook email service users can subscribe and get rid of those annoying ads, as well as register a personalized email address. This removes the need to have '@outlook.com' as part of your email, and makes the service a tiny bit more attractive to some users.

The Premium version of the service has surfaced at "premium.outlook.com" with the designation of "preview," indicating this may not be the finalized form of the service. It touts itself as a way to ditch advertisements and get personalized email for $19.95 per year to start with, though it will go up to $49.99/yr later on as its regular rate.

Click "Get Started" on the page to choose your personalized email address; you can use a domain you already have it if you'd like by entering it, then choosing "I own this domain." Upon doing so, you'll be required to sign into the account under which you bought it (so you'll have to sign in to GoDaddy if you got it through them, etc).

If you don't want to use your own domain, enter one you like and see whether it is available. You can also just skip this step initially and you'll be taken to your domain dashboard, where you can either proceed to your regular Outlook.com inbox or choose your domain name.

Premium Outlook.com features include creating personalized email addresses for up to five people, so everyone in the family or part of a small business, for example. This is free for the first year, after which you'll also be paying $10 on top of the $19.95 special rate. This offer is available until December 31, according to Microsoft.