Outlook Express RIP

Posted on April 19, 2008

In the latest march toward being laid to rest, Microsoft announced it will turn off access to its Hotmail service from Outlook Express at the end of June.

If you are one of those who accesses Hotmail this way, then Microsoft encourages you to download its free Windows Live Mail software.

Users will still be able to use Outlook, but first they may have to upgrade their Outlook Connector synchronization software.

Hotmail users also will still be able to use any other desktop e-mail client that is POP3-compliant, such as the open-source Thunderbird software. Macintosh users, meanwhile, can continue using Microsoft’s Entourage e-mail client for the Mac to access Hotmail, which is the second-most-popular Web mail service in the U.S. behind Yahoo Mail.

Outlook Express first came on the scene in 1997, when it was bundled with Internet Explorer 4.0. At one point the most popular e-mail software for Windows users, its usage started to decline after suffering major virus and malware problems early this decade. The last update, Outlook Express 6, was released in August 2004.

One of the primary reasons for dropping it though is said to be because the protocol used to download messages is too slow for the larger e-mail in-boxes now in use. For instance, the Windows Live service offers Hotmail users 5GB of mail in the inbox free of charge.

Windows Live Mail uses a new technology called DeltaSync to replicate e-mail, contacts and other data between Hotmail and a user’s PC. Microsoft says DeltaSync is faster because it only downloads new or modified messages and headers from the Hotmail server, whereas the old protocol downloaded everything.