Hotmail Plus users should already have PoP access. Unfortunately (or fortunately whichever way you look at it), regular hotmail users will have to wait for up to 12 months to get PoP access.

Taken from the Omar Shahine (Lead Program Manager, Hotmail) blog.

The story of POP continues like this… A few months ago some folks on the team hatched a plan to finally offer POP and starting this week Hotmail Plus users ($19.95 a year) will be able to use POP access from any device. In the interest of transparency though I want to be clear that we have plans to offer POP to all users (all premium and free) but we aren't ready to do that yet. I can't comment on a timeframe for when free users will get POP, but we hope to do so within the next 12 months.

Good to see they're finally giving users access to services their competitors offer.

Holy s***, it only took what? 15 years?

I had pop access years ago... huh?

Heh, check out some of the price differences in different currencies.

http://get.live.com/en-au/mailplus/features
http://get.live.com/en-us/mailplus/features
http://get.live.com/en-ca/mailplus/features
http://get.live.com/en-gb/mailplus/features

all converted to US dollars:
US $19.95
AU $32.82
GB $30.29
CA $29.93

What a rought. I mean I understand price gouging for physical goods, but online services?

I thought *@hotmail.com was blocked by most MTAs these days?

in other news...
MICROSOFT DISCOVERS THE WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT
POP PROTOCOL BEING USED BY THE REST OF THE WORLD!

What's so good about PoP access? Forgive my stupidity but what exactly does it offer?

edit: \/\/\/ oh, I feel like using thunderbird and it works fine with hotmail using the webmail plugin :)

last edited by whoop at 18:27:05 23/Sep/07

ability to use whatever email client you feel like

i rate hotmail 5 gaybars

hotmail is so 90's

they should just give up

gmail has them covered

I had pop access years ago... huh?

same. i thought you still could if you used outlook

the outlook thing isn't strictly pop access is it

Like Insom I was under the impression Outhouse's s***mail connection was http based.

Could someone please tell me what POP means in one sentence?

point of presence. basically if ur email provider supports it u can jsut shove their pop address into email clinet like outlook and ur user/pass and itll retrive ur email for you.

but really who cares.

point of presence.

heh. wrong.

for mail, POP means post office protocol. it is a common mail protocol supported in nearly all mail clients.

originally developed to run remote email on dialup links, where the user would connect, download all their mail, then disconnect.

but really who cares.

the focus on pop is largely due to the increase in mail clients being built into mobile devices such as phones. POP lends itself to this task perfectly with it's ability to periodically connect to a mail server on the internet to check and download mail for viewing at a later time by the user. this is why it is becoming a must have for webmail services that previously got away without providing it.

last edited by ara at 00:52:07 24/Sep/07

Point of Presence? What the f***? Try Post Office Protocol v3.

POP3 means you can use any standards-compliant email client to retrieve email from a server and keep a local copy on your device. Mobile phones, PDAs, and email programs all use POP3. All it requires is a server address (mail.bigpond.com / mail.optusnet.com.au / mail.iinet.net.au etc), a username (email address) and a password. Think of it like a P.O. Box at your local post office, and by using POP3 you can allow any client to get in there and get your messages as long as you give them a key...or username and password in this case.

More than one sentence but meh.

EDIT: f***, beaten.

exo, too quick for ewe :)

oh ok :(

ill jsut go hide in my corner now (tf2 corner!)

um, I'm pretty sure it stands for perpendicular office pencils

Yeah? Well I dumbed it down!

Piece Of Pie?

In non tech speak.
POP is the protocol used by most email apps to receive mail, SMTP is the one used to send.

There are others eg. IMAP... but POP and SMTP are pretty much supported by anything.

last edited by Obes at 14:13:55 24/Sep/07

Poon Over Penis