Finally, Microsoft have opened up free POP access to Hotmail users. No 3rd party tools required. It’s come too late for me, as the lack of POP access (free or paid) to my Hotmail account forced me over to GMail some time ago, and I’ve never looked back. However, my Hotmail account is still active, so I gave it a try out of curiosity.

Adding your account on the iPhone is simple enough – Just go into your email settings, add a new account of type ‘other’, fill in your credentials and the POP server settings will be configured automatically.

Maybe I’ve just become used to GMail’s IMAP access, but the Hotmail offering, whilst welcome, is a bit lacking. For example, you only get your main Inbox, so any folders you have set up are inaccessible. Also, it’s painfully slow, even over O2′s 3G. I haven’t tried it on WiFi yet so your mileage may vary.

Of course, this should work with any POP client, and the lack of folder support may be an iPhone limitation. However, I’ve not experienced this before with other POP accounts. I’ll be checking it later on my desktop client to see how it fares there.