Microsoft To Charge For Pop Mail Retrieval Beginning July 16th

[Brian Rector]

If you are using Hotmail to access email from your other email accounts, be prepared to cough up twenty bucks a year.

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-933024.html?legacy=cnet&tag=lthd

[MarkA]

That's insane! Plenty of other free emails offer the same thing for free. Now, if you could use POP3 to access Hotmail, that might be worth it.

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Mark
That's insane! Plenty of other free emails offer the same thing for free. Now, if you could use POP3 to access Hotmail, that might be worth it.

Many companies that offer these services are backing away and starting to charge. The "Plenty of free emails" may drop in # and the offers may not be as robust as we are used to :(

[Neil Derryberry]

That's insane! Plenty of other free emails offer the same thing for free. Now, if you could use POP3 to access Hotmail, that might be worth it.

Outlook 2002 does this... I get my hotmail right next to my corporate exchange mail.

[lee635]

My wife loves hotmail. But let's face it, what are they really doing for you? Hotmail isn't providing you with a dialup number or cable modem access or DSL access. So why do they need to charge $30 a year just for web based email with pop access? It's strictly a moneymaker for Bill Gates and crew.

They are going to charge it because they can... :((

[RandyAB]

With POP email access, you do not get to see all of the ads that the companies get paid to show on their site. That is why they are stopping the service. Yahoo started charging most people for POP access over a month ago.