Setting Up Hotmail POP Access on Windows Mobile

Dugald Wilson — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:29:16 GMT

I recently saw the announcement that Hotmail now supports POP access. Awesome news, as logging into the web version is a pain on a mobile phone. I grabbed my phone, and gave it a go:

After entering my Hotmail information, I got a nasty surprise:

Windows Mobile is smart enough to recognize the "Hotmail.com" extension and redirect you to their web interface. How helpful!

So, you are forced to do what you often have to do when someone walls you off with BS: you have to lie to them.

Here we have gotten extra sneaky and renamed Hotmail to hotmail2 - don't worry - this isn't actually used for anything.

Upon entering our new email address, we are through the gates:

Windows Mobile will offer to try to hunt down your settings for you, but since we have them in hand (see first link on this page), and since we gave them a bogus account, we will pass on this offer.

Next we specify this account as an Internet email provider

After that, we provide a couple names. These are for display purposes only:

Now we start entering useful settings for the POP account:

And finally, we can be truthful about our Hotmail account:

Finally, we set up our outgoing server:

And we are done:

Click Finish to tidy it all up, but you now have POP3 access to Hotmail from your Windows Mobile Phone.

Windows Mobile 6.1 Upgrade

Dugald Wilson — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:52:19 GMT

I had dinner with a few friends a while ago, where they proceeded to show off their newly upgraded phones. They finally sold me on upgrading to Windows Mobile 6.1. It is a fantastic upgrade, and if it is available to you, I strongly urge you to get it.

To do the upgrade, I followed the link to information in this great post by Keith Elder.
He is right when he says it is an intimidating number of steps, but they are all very straightforward, and there is little chance of error if you follow through them all.

The Windows 6.1 Upgrade has several valuable new features:

Threaded SMS Messaging: Now you can view your SMS messages just like a threaded messenger chat window. Invaluable, as most of my SMS messages involve some back and forth. Viewing the full conversation is much more helpful.
New Home Screen: Much more dynamic menus in the home screen. I do wish it was customizable and had a listing for recent programs. Other than that, a welcome revision.
Vanity Dialing: Under Key Settings, this option allows you to dial 1-800-FLOWERS style numbers using the QWERTY style keyboard of most smartphones.
Voice Command: This tool reads to you your messages, incoming calls, calendar events, etc. It's is very configurable, so you can turn off individual types of notifications. I find it a great help when driving, and I can't read the messages that come my way. Still, you may want to exercise discretion in what you want your phone reading aloud to you.

Check it out!