I've managed to avoid all the MS bullshit by using outlook to check my hotmail accounts.....



So now, as of about 5 minutes ago, outlook gives me an error that "access to hotmail with outlook or outlook express now requires a subscription"


Nice of them to give me any advance notice





ASSHOLES!

</rant>

Those bastard, doesn't your isp provide a pop account?

Never heard of that before.  

I need to start moving over to gmail

Quoted: Never heard of that before.   I need to start moving over to gmail

I got a gmail account. Don;t use it however.

Uhh it's been all over the net for a while... If you were paying for Hotmail you get to keep it...

uhhh.... www.hotmail.com
you can check it right there

Mine just did the same thing.  I have 3 hotmail accounts and the oldest one just did this to me.  I guess I will just stop using hotmail.

Well, it may have been all over the net, but they should have sent an email to their users.

And yes, my ISP provides accounts, but I've had my hotmail accounts since LONG before MS bought them.....so I remember when hotmail didn't completely suck.  As a result of having it for so long, its the email address that all my friends and family have.

Guess I need to get my butt in gear and get my server back up and running and get my own mailserver finished.  

Or just switch to one of my many gmail accounts

Mine still works with Outlook (and I don't pay)...  but mine is also one of those accounts that wasn't upgraded to the 250MB size until a week ago, so maybe the server on which my mail resides is down on the list of those still needing to be "upgraded".  

Microsoft ends free Hotmail access from Outlook
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Published Tuesday 28th September 2004 10:32 GMT

Hotmail users who use Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express clients will now have to pay for the privilege. Users must sign up to either a Hotmail Plus account for $19.95 a year or an MSN Premium account, at $99.95 a year to continue accessing the service from their desktop client.

Microsoft cited abuse by spammers as the reason. Because its email clients are scriptable, Microsoft had been grappling with spammers who automated the sign-up and bulk sending processes. Rivals such as Yahoo! also charge a premium for POP3 access to their email services.

This being Microsoft, things aren't straightforward. Just as Outlook uses common email protocols and obfuscates them in dense wrappings of RPC (Remote Procedure Calls), Hotmail shuns POP3 for a Microsoft implementation of WebDAV, a much richer web publishing protocol for which email is just one application. So, apart from a few clever hacks, client access to Hotmail has been limited to Microsoft email clients. Ximian's Connector software scrapes Exchange Server's WebDAV interface to provide Office interoperability for its Linux desktop, so it's theoretically possible that third party email clients will take up the onerous challenge. It's just very unlikely that they'll see much reward in the task.®

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/28/hotmail_from_outlook_fees/

Im glad thay did this. Now I can finally drop outlook express and get a REAL e-mail program..

Yahoo ended free POP3 access to their email service two years ago. Web access is unchanged, same with Hotmail.

I found this "workaround" for the hotmail POP3 "issue" and was wondering if anyone else has tried it:  sourceforge.net/projects/hotpop3/

?

gmail, free with 500x the storage, EZ to use, clean and cut, just a few text ads unlike all the BS ones on hotmail. I still have my hotmail only for sentimental reasons.

SCREW HOTMAIL, go yahoo or gmail.

if you want gmail I will give an invite