where have all my contacts from hotmail gone

In Outlook.com contacts ARE people...To access People from Outlook.com, hover the cursor over the Outlook logo in the top left and click on the down-arrow that appears to the right of the Outlook logo.

Select People. 

Returning to your Inbox from People:

Hover the cursor over the People logo and click on the down-arrow that appears on the right of the People logo. Select Mail.  

You can also get to Calendar or Skydrive in the same manner.

Filtering your list:

Above the search box at the top of the Contact list on the left, is a filter option which says "All ". 

If you click on this you should see the groups you created in the past.  

Click on any of these to filter your list to just the contacts in that group.

Selecting one or many Contacts:

If you click on a contact name in the list, the details for that contact will appear on the right.  

Alternatively, if you click on the check box to the left of the contact picture, you can build up a list of selected contacts on the right by clicking on the check box to the left of multiple contacts.

Adding/Removing from Group membership:

Whether you select one or many contacts, you will see a top menu bar option for Groups.  

If you click on this, then it will display the list of groups with a check box checked for each group that the contact(s) is/are a member of. 

You can uncheck to remove or check to add, the selection of contact(s) to the chosen groups, and then click on Apply to apply the changes.  

Your selected contacts will then be updated to be added or removed from the groups you chose as appropriate.

Delete

When you select one or many contacts, you will see a top menu bar option for Delete.  

If you click on Delete and click Delete in the confirmation box, the selected contacts will be deleted.

Edit:

You can choose edit if you have clicked on a single contact (name or picture) in the list on the left to see their details on the right.  

When viewing their details, click on Edit in the top menu bar to edit or add details.

Browsers:

We recommend that you keep your web browser up to date to get the most out of the People experience.

If you’re not using an updated browser, some parts of People might not work and it might not display properly.