Nobody can resist the coming mobile computing - Hotmail frees its POP3

In a recent hotmail update:

February 06
Have you seen the latest Hotmail changes?

It’s finally happening! The Hotmail and People pages are getting the latest new features, rolling out to users worldwide over the next couple of weeks. Read all about it in this Hotmail blog post.

Here’s a quick rundown of what you can expect to see:

o More storage in Hotmail. Start with 5 GB, and watch your storage grow, as you need it.
o More themes in Hotmail (including some that change based on time of day or weather)
o The top banner ad moved to the side. (You’ve been waiting for that, haven’t you?)
o Quickly add maps, directions, movie times and more to e-mail messages. It makes planning a night out so much easier. (UK and US-only, for the moment)
o See “what’s new” updates from people in your network on Hotmail’s Today page.
o Get Hotmail on your mobile phone’s e-mail program. POP3 access is becoming available to Hotmail users in the US and Brazil, in addition to the countries we told you about earlier. For more about this feature, see our earlier blog post.
o Create e-mail signatures in HTML. Get as fancy as you want to be.
o The People page has been re-organized. Read more about changes to the People page in our blog post about managing contacts.

For more details and some pictures of what the update will look like, see the blog post from the Hotmail team.

Please continue to send us feedback about Hotmail—we’re always looking for good suggestions for how to make Hotmail even better. Please visit the new Hotmail Online Solutions Center to get answers to your Hotmail questions, fast.

Note: If you haven’t seen any changes yet, they’ll be rolling out gradually, so you should see them in the next week or two.

Thanks for using Windows Live Hotmail!

January 14
A new way to get Hotmail on your phone

We are happy to announce that POP3 technology is now available to Hotmail users in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. If you don’t see your country or region in this list, never fear, we’ll be rolling POP3 out to more parts of the world later this year.

What is POP3? It is a protocol that allows almost any e-mail software program that you’ve installed on your mobile phone or PC* to get messages from your e-mail inbox on the web and deliver them in the designated program.

Although you always could access Hotmail on your web-enabled mobile phone by going to mobile.live.com, now that Hotmail has POP3, you can get to it more conveniently using the e-mail software on your PC or mobile device* such as a Windows Mobile phone, iPhone, or BlackBerry.

When you set up Hotmail in the e-mail program on your PC or mobile device, you may be asked for the following information:

POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com
Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live
SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25)
Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)
TLS/SSL required? Yes

In addition to POP3, Microsoft offers additional technologies that can provide you with an even richer experience of your e-mail. Try viewing your Hotmail using Windows Live Mail, Microsoft Office Outlook via the Outlook Connector, or Windows Live for Windows Mobile phone.

Looking for help with Hotmail? Visit the Windows Live Hotmail Solution Center! The Solution Center has instructions on how to set up your e-mail software to send and receive Windows Live Hotmail messages using POP3. You’ll also find instructions on how to set up Hotmail on the web to give you POP3 access to a non-Windows Live e-mail account. If you have problems using POP3 access, Windows Live Hotmail Solution Center also has links to report a problem with Hotmail.

We hope you enjoy the many ways in which you can access your Windows Live Hotmail!

Gmail has both IMAP and POP3 available for the users. Now, Hotmail frees its POP3 service, which was only available to its plus users. So, what Yahoo! Mail will do?

I like competition.

I like the coming age of mobile computing ...