Child of the Machine

So you’d like to stop using Hotmail in place of GMail because it’s easier to access on your iPhone? Well you’ve probably read a lot of articles on the internet telling you to:

Forward your mail to another e-mail account

Which  you try, only to find that Microsoft seems to have responded to number of people doing this by either disabling it or now making it a paid service (according to one article I read)… So instead you’ll get this error message which makes little sense:

You’re only able to forward mail to a custom domain or an e-mail address that ends in hotmail.com, msn.com, or live.com. Please try again.

Few people know this (at least I didn’t anyway) but Microsoft has finally come to the table with POP access to your Hotmail account.

POP allows mail clients like Outlook or Thunderbird to download your emails using a recognised standard thats been around since I was a boy…

GMail also have the ability to download emails from other POP account in to your GMail account… You see where I’m going with this now don’t you!

In GMail:

1. Go to Settings (top right).
   
2. Then the Accounts tab.
3. Then the Add a mail account you own link.

On the following screen start entering the following:

• Email: youremailaddress@hotmail.com
• Username: youremailaddress@hotmail.com
• Password: yourpassword
• POP Server: pop3.live.com
• Port: 995

I also checked the following checkboxes:

• Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server.
• Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail.

Now all your Hotmail emails in your inbox will be brought in to GMail. GMail will also continue to download you emails for you as they arrive in your Hotmail account.

If you’re trying to access your hotmail on your iPhone like I was an alternative is the application mbox mail (which access hotmail with your all folders) however I’m going to go back to using the normal iPhone mail client…

I’ve just noticed Dictionary.com have released their iPhone application which doesn’t require an internet connection! Because of this it is  35Mb in size so use you wifi connection once and save on your mobile data… I personally use this online dictionary all the time and glad to see it’s free considering others cost up $20+

Get Dictionary.com now from the app store

You’ll find a number of articles over the internet talking about having to forward your hotmail account to your gmail account in order to access it on your iPhone. You’ll also find numerous articles about alternative solutions like using the paid izymail service.

But now low and behold Microsoft have come to the party and offerred free pop access to your Hotmail account (previously u had to be a premium subscriber) so you can access your hotmail DIRECTLY from your iPhone..

Don’t believe me? See the Windows Live help article on how to do it for yourself..