With the addition of FREE POP3 access and SMTP, you can now send and receive Hotmail messages on any POP3 client. To setup you Gmail account to access your Hotmail, just do the following:

1. Login to Gmail.
2. Click settings at the top right.
3. Go to Accounts.
4. Under ‘Get mail from other accounts:’ select ‘add another mail account’.
5. This opens a popup, put in your Hotmail address.
6. For your username and password, put in your Hotmail address\Windows Live ID.
7. Setup the Settings with the following:
   POP3 Server: pop3.live.com
   POP Port: 995
   POP SSL Encryption: Yes (On or Required)

8. If you want SMTP to send from your Hotmail account, add the following for Outgoing Settings:
   SMTP Server: smtp.live.com
   SMTP Port: 25
   Authentication: Yes (On – Use POP username and password or Hotmail credentials)
   TLS or SSL Secure Encrypted Connection: Yes (On or Required)

Note that thiis FREE service is only available in certain countries and is being release worldwide by the end of Q4 2009. If you are not in one of the special countries you can set that up by following a little magic as posted on blog.computerplumber.ca