back in the day, when I got my first hotmail address I was actually syncing two accounts to outlook, via IMAP. for some reason microsoft got upset about this one day, and decided to disable this basic feature of mail accounts – crippling hotmail for me, and forcing me to move over. around this time gmail was launched, and thankfully i moved over there. now, you couldn’t access gmail via IMAP then – but they were in the process of adding new features, not taking them away like microsoft – hence it was worth the move.

I don’t know many people still actually using hotmail, however my girlfriend @b3xx0r still is. She has also just bought herself a nice fancy iPhone (congratulations on the new job! :D) and she wants the constantly updating mail app to check her hotmail account. this is, of course, now completely impossible.

There are apps that will check her mail, but they cost – and worse, they don’t constantly update like the built in mail app does (though that’s an apple limitation, not an MS one).

Still, you’d think that if you wanted to leave an old hotmail address behind – but didn’t want to miss any mail, that they would have the basic goodwill to allow you to forward all your email to your new account (as the only way of checking it is constantly checking the site!).

well no, you can’t. you can only forward to other microsoft owned addresses. now that’s not very good spirited is it – one could be forgiven for thinking that microsoft know that their mail product sucks, and the only way to keep users is to make sure they’re locked in. I’m so glad I moved!