Hotmail access via Outlook Express dies on September 1

Since Hotmail now has POP3 support, Microsoft is once again making plans to retire its Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) protocol. The deadline for retirement is set for September 1, 2009. Microsoft wants to phase DAV out in favor of DeltaSync, which works more efficiently with large inboxes (Windows Live Hotmail offers 5GB for free). E-mail will still be accessible via Hotmail.com; this change only affects offline e-mail clients.

In short, Microsoft is asking for action from three groups of users. Hotmail users that get their e-mail via Microsoft Office Outlook are recommended to start using the Office Outlook Connector. Hotmail users that get their e-mail via Entourage are recommended to change their settings. Hotmail users that get their e-mail via Outlook Express are recommended to switch to Windows Live Mail. The latest client release of Windows to have Outlook Express is Windows XP; Vista includes Windows Mail, and Windows 7 does not include an e-mail client at all.

In April 2008, Microsoft announced that it would be killing the DAV protocol on June 30, 2008. After an outcry from users that this was too soon, the software giant agreed in May 2008 but did not give a new deadline for the killdate (we now know that it's less than three months away). POP3 support was added to Hotmail in March 2009.