Will accessing Hotmail via POP keep account active?

Factual Questions
1

MS recently added POP access for Hotmail in the US. AFAIK, in order to keep your Hotmail account active, you have to check it once every thirty days or they delete your mail. Will setting up gmail to get mail from Hotmail via POP take care of this, or do I still need to actually load up Hotmail once a month?

2

I’ve accessed my hotmail accounts exclusively through Outlook express for something like 6-7 years, and haven’t had any problems.

Edit: And Gmail since I got it.

3

Me too but that is not POP3 access but HTML.

Then Hotmail said it would discontinue Outlook Express for new accounts but continued it for existing accounts.

Then they said it would be discontinued for all accounts and a sea of protest rose and they cancelled that.

I see now they are giving POP3 access, maybe in preparation for discontinuing HTML access.

Still, what I like about Hotmail with HTML access is that I have copies of the emails in Hotmail’s servers and in my computer so I can access them in different ways.

I have had my hotmail account since Hotmail was a tiny startup outfit and it has become my main generic email address but the day they cancel Outlook Express access is the day I stop using it. If they go with plain POP3 then I might start using Gmail more.

4

Bump.

I can see Apocalypso (on Edit, missed it the first time) is accessing Hotmail acct. through Gmail, but also through Outlook Express, so maybe GMail is not keeping the account active.

Can anyone verify that only using GMail thru POP will keep Hotmail account active?

5

I maintain a Hotmail –> POP gateway application ( http://www.ecobyte.com/hotpop/ ) from before the days that Hotmail provided POP access (and still useful for other reasons currently). I know that accessing Hotmail through DAV (the method that Outlook Express and Hotmail Popper uses) does indeed keep the account alive.

However, I do not think that that checking through Hotmail’s native POP only will keep the account alive. This is based on an anecdote I heard from a Hotmail user, so it could be wrong, or an old problem that’s been resolved…