You are correct the 2002 version is not supported according to this microsoft
site. Given my lack of technical expertise, what do you recommend as my
options to solve my problem?
Pay Microsoft to get a Windows Live Hotmail PLUS account. As of
November 2007, they added POP/SMTP support for paid Windows Live Hotmail
accounts (but not for paid MSN Hotmail Premium accounts).
Try to use FreePOPs. This runs as a local POP-to-HTTP screen scraper
proxy to let you connect your POP e-mail client to Microsoft's HTTP
webmail server and try to navigate through it by scraping the contents
of the web pages presented by the webmail server. One change in the web
pages and this technique can be rendered worthless. I found FreePOPs to
be so flaky that mail sessions were way to unreliable. Also, while they
have add-ins to support @hotmail.com, they don't yet have one to support
@live.com (which is also a Hotmail domain). So it depends on what is
the domain to your Hotmail account as to whether FreePOPs will even try
to interface to your Hotmail account. You didn't mention the domain for
your Hotmail account.
Change to an e-mail client that includes Deltasync support. Microsoft
dropped WebDAV support from freebie Hotmail account back in November
2004. You had to pay to get WebDAV support. Now Microsoft intends to
drop WebDAV support altogether and move to their new proprietary
Deltasync protocol which you can use for free or paid accounts (but with
paid accounts you also get POP/SMTP access so it's your choice;
Deltasync behaves more like IMAP to synchronize all folders instead of
just against the Inbox). Deltasync-enabled e-mail clients include:
Outlook 2003 and 2007 (once you install the Outlook Connector add-on)
and Windows Live Mail - so again you are locked into Microsoft-only
solutions for an e-mail client to include Deltasync support (and not pay
to get POP/SMTP access).
As always since Hotmail arrived back in July 1996 and got bought by
Microsoft in December 1997, there's the webmail interface. I know
several users that gave up on jumping through hoops with every change
made by Microsoft regarding access to Hotmail when using a local e-mail
client and went to just using the webmail interface. They lose the more
potent rules in Outlook [Express] and other features but they aren't
going to bother trying to hit Microsoft's today target on how to access
Hotmail, and they'll be yet another major change to Hotmail access
before this year ends, too.
Then there is the option to just leave Hotmail and get a free or paid
e-mail account that supports non-Microsoft proprietary e-mail protocols,
like POP, IMAP, and SMTP, and keeps supporting those standard protocols
instead of yanking them away one year, bring them back, yank away, bring
back, repeat.
Microsoft, on average, has made at least one major change per year
regarding access to Hotmail. They just can't make up their mind (yep,
that was deliberately singular) on what they want. Engineers love to
change things and to provide an excuse for their continued salary.
Their reasons for moving to Deltasync are for Microsoft's benefit, not
the user's. They don't want to support RFC standardized e-mail
protocols (and they'll make you pay for them). Last November 2007,
there was mention of intention to return POP/SMTP to the freebie Hotmail
accounts in a year and maybe even add IMAP but don't hold your breath
unless you're really pissed at everything else going on in your life and
want to and all the frustration.
