I've got an 'old' hotmail account (and not subject to the money grabbing attempts by msn to charge for POP access to new acccounts)... but over the last month or so I'm starting to get jacked off at Entourage.

Everytime I load it for a period of 2-3 weeks it would give an 'unable to connect to server' error, if you just hit send/recieve again it would connect and download my mail. Now, it's doing the same thing but I have to hit send/recieve twice until I stop getting error messages...

Is anyone else having this problem? Any idea why I'm having this problem? (I've updated MS Office to most recent updates and still have the same prob!)

Any suggestions on what to change to? I don't mind chaging email programs but would like to continue to use my hotmail address because I can't be arsed changing my details with everyone... and I really really really don't want to have to use a web based interface to check my mail every day...

Thoughts are appreciated...

Do you have more than one account set up in entourage, maybe another one is producing errors.

No, just the one account.

I did add in a gmail account (but this was after the errors started) and the gmail would connect, download and then hotmail would come and die...

I've removed the gmail acccount as I wasn't using it.

It seems to be an odd side-effeect of a minor change in the protocols MS use for Hotmail and passport.net ... people using the official MSN Messenger client for OSX these days have to connect manually or try to connect again after auto-connect-on-launch fails.

If you want to bypass Hotmail's pay-for-PPP-access, you cann use the free shell program 'gotmail' or the shareware GUI app "Mail Forward" -- both of these will successfully log into your Hotmail account and send them intact to another mail server. I use 'gotmail' to regularly grab any Hotmails and forward them to my gmail account, which I can then access via PPP from Eudora.


B.

are you sure that you updated Office (downloads from www.mactopia.com) or did you just upgrade it (in package from store, limewire)? Check Mactopia to find out.

Yep, done with the Microsoft Autoupdate.

My understanding was that "mail forward" doesn't work anymore with hotmail accounts because of changes microsoft made.

I use an online service called 4smartphone.net. Allows me to use push email on my smartphone, but it also has a major bonus - it can "pull" email from non-POP accounts, including Hotmail (specifically supported) .


The basic service including this facility is only AUD $6 a month - and it allows me to get all my email in one account.

Because it's a microsoft exchange account, it also syncs my mail accross all my devices - ie if I read it on my smartphone and archive it in an "old email" folder, when I get my mail on my mac when I get home, it is already archived and isn't flagged by my mac as unread.

I personally find entourage too clunky, and with the version of apple mail in tiger, it supports an exchange server mailbox for this service anyway.

worth thinking about for the peace of mind and the ability to get your mail all in one place.

http://www.4smartphone.net/ServicePlans.aspx