The story of POP continues like this… A few months ago some folks on the live team hatched a plan to finally offer POP to Hotmail Plus users ($19.95 a year). They will be able to use POP access from any device. They have plans to offer POP to all users (all premium and free) but theyaren't ready to do that yet. I can't comment on a timeframe for when free users will get POP.

If you do take advantage of this premium feature and sign up for Hotmail plus you'll also get an ad-free experience, more storage, larger attachment support, and a non expiring account.

The POP service requires that you use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) with the POP and SMTP connection and use SMTP authentication. This is to ensure that your email address and password are not subject to tampering. The settings are the following:

POP: pop3.live.com (port 995)
SMTP: smtp.live.com (port 25)
Note: make sure you check the box that indicates that your outgoing server requires authentication (in most mail clients this is not checked by default).
Username: your full email address
Password: your Windows Live ID password

In addition, Hotmail has a new piece of software called Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, which basically works exactly like POP, i.e. downloads all your hotmail emails onto your computer. However, the program only works with Outlook 2003/2007. I have been using this program for a few months and it works great. The description provided by Microsoft is "With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for free!" The download link is http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7aad7e6a-931e-438a-950c-5e9ea66322d4&displaylang=en