I don't know anything about Hotmail, but I use Entourage to send and
receive Gmail and .Mac mail, with only two notable problems: (1)
Outgoing Rules don't work right. (2) I can't move a message from the
..Mac folders to the main set of folders just by dragging and dropping.
To set up .Mac with Entourage, I just followed the directions at
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=153262
In Entourage, I went to Entourage > Account Settings... clicked New and
filled out the boxes, remembering that it's IMAP, not POP. That seems
to mean that it shows up as a separate Inbox, while Gmail (which is
POP) comes into the main Inbox.
In the Accounts dialog, I set .Mac mail to be the default, so every new
email starts off with my .Mac address in the From box. (Forwards and
Replies are sent from the account in which I received them, because I
don't have the "Reply using the default account" box checked in
Preferences > Mail & News Preferences > Reply & Forward.) If I don't
want to send it from .Mac, I pick another account in the From dropdown.
The two problems mentioned in the first paragraph are apparently just
the way Entourage works with all IMAP accounts, and they're discussed
in many threads here.
