Outlook Express was the popular and famous email and news client from Microsoft. It came pre-installed with Windows 98 and Windows XP and was also a part of the Internet Explorer download. So if you installed the web browser, you end up having the email program as well. Outlook Express became the favorite email program for the Windows operating system simply because it was very easy to use. It took only a couple of minutes to setup and configure multiple email accounts on the program and it did a decent job of sending, receiving and managing email messages.
Hotmail was (?) an online email service that Microsoft bought over. It was one of the first to offer free email addresses to anyone - all you needed was an Internet connection. It became extremely popular all over the world. The service has been rechristened to Windows Live Hotmail.
Access Hotmail using Outlook Express - my story of how I added and configured my online email account
Microsoft did provide integration of free Hotmail accounts with Outlook Express. I had configured my Hotmail account on Outlook Express and used it for years. However, I remember reading somewhere that this access was available to only paid users, but I had mine for free and it worked quite well.
A few days back, when I was still using Outlook Express, I get an email from Microsoft informing me that access to Windows Live Hotmail from Outlook Express will soon be stopped - it would end on 30th June 2008. This was because the company was disabling the use of DAV protocol that was used to communicate with web-based mail-server of Hotmail. DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol, for those who really want to know what that stands for), is a protocol, like POP3 or IMAP, but is not well suited for accessing large inboxes. Now that the email storage space on Windows Live Hotmail is a "huge" 5GB, the need for more efficient protocols has arisen and so DAV has to be shown the door. DAV is being replaced with DeltaSynch which is far superior to DAV ... as it enables email clients to only download changes since the last time the client polled the email server for changes. This, as you can understand, is more efficient and high performing than downloading all headers in every folder.
Unfortunately, DeltaSynch is not supported by Outlook Express and would require too many changes in the software and so this popular email has to go too!
Windows Live Mail - the new generation email software for Hotmail, Gmail and more...
The good news is that Microsoft has released a new email client called Windows Live Mail which is available as a separate download from the live.com web site. This 100% free software allows you to setup and manage multiple email accounts including those from Hotmail,Gmail and Yahoo!Mail... and yes, your old POP3 or IMAP accounts can also be added quite easily.
Though, Windows Live Mail looks a little different from Outlook Express, you can customize the interface to suit your needs. Additionally, this software has two great features that were missing from O.E. - an automated Junk email filter and a super quick email search utility.
Windows Live Mail also serves as a RSS reader and provides an interface through which you can upload updated to your blog directly from the program. A Photo email feature lets you send large digital photographs over email without clogging the inbox of the recipients. The images are actually sent as thumbnails (and yes, you can customize the layout and size of those) in the email. The larger versions of the photographs, that are stored at a private web location, are displayed only when the recipient clicks on the thumbnail.
So if you want to access Hotmail via Outlook Express - well those days are over. Microsoft has stopped the development and support for O.E. and is instead insisting you download and install the latest Windows Live Mail that has much more to offer that its predecessor.
Update:Hotmail POP settings have recently been announced and are available to only some users. Anyway, this feature is being gradually rolled out and by the end of 2009 all free accounts will presumably be POP enabled. With POP, you can now download Hotmail email using any email program (including Outlook Express) and not just Windows Live Mail.
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