Hotmail users will soon be receiving more options for retrieving mail from their accounts, it has been revealed by CNET.
Hotmail (or HoTMaiL as it was written when it was started by Hotmail Corporation in 1996, referring to the HTML web markup language) has always been notoriously difficult to get mail out of without using the web interface, for example on mobile devices or desktop clients. It wasn’t until the so-called “Wave 3” release in September 2008 that the now-archaic POP3 protocol was made available to all Hotmail account holders. Up until then, the WebDAV protocol was made available but only to paying customers since 2004, and the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector gave Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 access to Hotmail over the proprietary DeltaSync protocol.
It has now been confirmed by Microsoft that in the coming week, Hotmail will support the Exchange ActiveSync protocol. This allows for the full synchronisation of e-mail, contacts and calendar to platforms that support the protocol. As this is the protocol used by Microsoft Exchange there are already a long list of supporting platforms out there. On top of the desktop clients (Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail and so on) that you would expect, this also means iPhone and iPad; Android phones; and of course many other devices and clients.
Check out more about the upcoming features on the CNET article.
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