Like many people, my first email account was with Hotmail – I signed up way back in 1998, when the logo still looked much like the original one above! Also like many people, over the years I preferred other email providers, and moved my main email account elsewhere. The trouble with leaving an old email address, just like when you physically move house, it that some mail still comes to the old address.
Logging regularly into more than one email account is a complete pain and should be unnecessary as most providers have the facility to check other accounts. I use Gmail, in my case via Google Apps for your domain, and this has the facility to check other accounts. I’ve used this for some time to check my other Gmail account, but could never set it up for Hotmail as MSN in their infinite wisdom didn’t provide the necessary POP3 access, unless you paid for it.
Thankfully they have finally moved into the modern world. It doesn’t seem to have been particularly announced as yet, but using the following settings, POP3 access now seems to work on standard hotmail accounts:
POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: yourname@hotmail.com
Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail
SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25)
Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)
TLS/SSL required? Yes
This can be plugged into your email providers ‘check another account’ function and can also be used to download your mail onto an application such as Outlook.
One warning on this – you still need to log in to Hotmail occasionally to maintain your account – POP3 won’t be sufficient for this. About five years ago I forgot to log in for a little too long and I lost a number of old emails, which I didn’t have backed up anywhere. Very very annoying, so don’t fall into the trap!
