Like every other service, Microsoft's live.com team is constantly tweaking and modifying the user interface on Hotmail. The goal is to make it easier and easier, to add new features and capabilities and make it look more cool, but the end result is often that it just baffles us users, frustrating as heck that things aren't where they're supposed to be. Sometimes even the documentation on web sites ends up inconsistent with the site itself!

Hotmail has been constantly watching services like Google's Gmail web-based email system and being "inspired by" (or "ripping off ideas from" :-) them, which is another reason why they're constantly tweaking. And one more wrench in the works: Microsoft Office 2010 is going to include an online document editing and sharing capability and I'm sure that'll be managed by the live.com system.

Then again, you probably don't care. You just want to change your password. Here's how you do it:

When you're logged in to Hotmail, look on the top right where you'll see your name, your picture/icon, if specified, and the important little downward-pointing triangle. Click on your name and you'll find a menu pop up:

Choose "View your Account" and you'll move to a completely different area in the Hotmail site, actually more a part of live.com:

See about halfway through where it shows "*******" where your password would be and has a "Change" link next to it? I've highlighted it to make it easier to find. Click on that link and ...

You can see what to do from here. The challenge isn't changing your password, frankly, it's finding where to change your password!