Hotmail rolls out email account aggregation

unlike hotmail, gmail offers the ability to have a little program on my nokia mobile. with hotmail i have to go into the browser. microsoft need to make an app for hotmail on mobile devices too.

Mike, i have a Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte which runs the S40 software. It''s not the best mobile computing platform but i love the phone! gmail allows me to run a specific app on the S40 but not sure what you suggest above is compatible with my phone. S40 in the UK & the EU is very popular so it would be really handy to have a specific app for the device. Personally i'd use hotmail over gmail if this option was available (and fast).

"This is a feature that allows consumers to receive email from other POP-enabled email accounts (including Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL) directly into their Windows Live Hotmail inbox." Um, what? I've had this feature for a few years now. Why is this new? Of course, with any half-decent email account, you could always just use an auto-forwarder to your Hotmail account and use a rule to filter it into its own separate folder.

@Waethorn: Did you have a paid account? Maybe it's now open to free accounts. One thing that I really don't like about Hotmail is that huge ad on the right side of the inbox. It's strange 'cause Yahoo! Mail has a similar ad but somehow I don't see it as hugely intrusive as the one in Hotmail. I'd say the only way to access Hotmail (or @live.com) is through an email client like WLM.

darkmarx, Yahoo mail has been freely compatible with any pop-capable email client for several years, free of charge.

gorath, In the U.S., Yahoo Mail isn't available for pop capable client use. That features is only available for paid account users. This has been a long standing complaint of U.S. Yahoo Mail customers. Most of the rest of the world gets free POP client use, while America gets shut out. Pretty dumb in my opinion.

Ocean, You should go to the link I had in the mail. There are Live standalone apps for other platforms. (Differing levels of support depending on the platform)

"since you don't have a Windows Mobile device you may be a little more limited." No, buying a Windows Mobile device means you're limited.

Beyond that also, Windows Live Calendar Mobile has been taken down and is not accessible via a mobile browser. More frustration as I would prefer to use the Live services over Google.

I love Windows Live mail and use it as my primary mailbox, but I am becoming increasingly unhappy about Microsoft's refusal to support any communication protocol other than POP. It locks in to specific configurations. If it would support IMAP on both this feature and on the mailbox itself, I could use a single integrated solution for each of the following: my Windows box's client, my Linux boxes' clients, my phone, my webmail. As it stands, I have to use either webmail or the half-ass IMAP-like system that is the Mozilla Thunderbird application on my Linux box, and have no integration at all for webmail (if I use this system with POP, it will screw up the syncage on my other accounts). I can't help but feel that Microsoft is deliberately letting IMAP slide in order to prevent elegant sync with clients they haven't specifically authorized.

sorry I should say: "It locks you in to specific configurations" and "the half-ass IMAP-like system that is the 'webmail' extension for the Mozilla Thunderbird application on my Linux box"

robertsgay, what's the difference in being taken seriously between hotmail and gmail? not a lot i think. if you want to be taken seriously you have a corporate account, for example @microsoft.com, or, especially for you, @apple.com.

@gay: they're all the same, gmail, hotmail, yahoo, aol, it's all 'consumer' stuff... no professional person would consider using a web-based account as their main email service...why? - because it doesn't look professional (and therefore not serious).