As of March 12, 2009, POP3 access is available free to all Hotmail users worldwide.

POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)

POP SSL required? Yes

User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com

Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live

SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25 or 587)

Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)

TLS/SSL required? Yes

Microsoft offers Windows Live Mail, a desktop application which allows for downloading of Hotmail, MSN and Live mail accounts (free or premium), but this is not a POP service, it uses a different protocol Microsoft call DeltaSync which enables you to seamlessly sync your folders from hotmail on your desktop but you can create new message rulos on this app you still have to do it on the web-based version

Another solution would be to use Mozilla Thunderbird with the webmail add-on -- but it requires you to install the (free) Hotmail retriever. It also works with Yahoo Mail.

You can also use a free alternative as a gateway and forwarding service which converts Hotmail accounts into a regular POP3 mailbox. One such gateway is "Webmail Retriever" Apocgraphy.com/WebmailRetrieverRed. Another is IzyMail.

From JE: Note that these products are not really free. They have a free trial version. IzyMail is $18 a year. It may be reasonable, but it's not free.

Another alternative that may be good enough for some users would be to forward all their Hotmail mail to another email address that does support POP3 (this may not be possible: it is restricted to Microsoft based accounts). Some users would prefer not to combine their inboxes like this, but most POP users would probably not mind, since POP is mostly a service that facilitates importing all of one's email to one convenient place.

Email forwarding is one of the few features that Hotmail and Live Mail do support, and it can be accessed by navigating to Options->Manage your account->Forward mail to another e-mail account.

About POP3:

POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) is the most recent version of a standard protocol for receiving e-mail. POP3 is a client/server protocol in which e-mail is received and held for you by your Internet server. Periodically, you (or your client e-mail receiver) check your mail-box on the server and download any mail, probably using POP3. This standard protocol is built into most popular e-mail products, such as Eudora and Outlook Express. It's also built into the Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers. POP3 is designed to delete mail on the server as soon as the user has downloaded it. However, some implementations allow users or an administrator to specify that mail be saved for some period of time. POP can be thought of as a "store-and-forward" service.

An alternative protocol is Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). IMAP provides the user more capabilities for retaining e-mail on the server and for organizing it in folders on the server. IMAP can be thought of as a remote file server.

POP and IMAP deal with the receiving of e-mail and are not to be confused with the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), a protocol for transferring e-mail across the Internet. You send e-mail with SMTP and a mail handler receives it on your recipient's behalf. Then the mail is read using POP or IMAP.

The conventional port number for POP3 is 110.

Please refer to the related links for more information.