Please Help With ISP/Mac Mail Question

Amie · #1 June 25th, 2005, 08:41 PM

I'm trying to get my Mail (the application that came with my iBook) set up. I don't have a .Mac account nor do I want one. From what I understand, I don't need one in order to activate/use Mail. Now, when I went into Mail to create my new account, it askes me questions like POP or IMAP and ... "smtp." server and go get information from my ISP about which server my Internet mail (I use Hotmail) would be coming from into my Mac Mail. So, I contacted my ISP (T-Mobile) and asked them to provide more information about which e-mail services they support through Hotmail.

Did I do the right thing ... or should I be contacting Hotmail/MSN instead? I'm confused...

HateEternal · #2 June 25th, 2005, 11:45 PM

Are you paying for hotmail service?

If you are just doing free service you can only access hotmail through the web site. If you are paying then you can setup mail to use it. If this is the case, the information should be on their website, if you can't find it call Hotmail, not your ISP.

If you aren't paying and would like a free mail service that you can check with mail you could try gmail. www.gmail.com

if you need an invite to sign up I should have some, let me know.

MisterMe · #3 June 25th, 2005, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amie

I'm trying to get my Mail (the application that came with my iBook) set up. I don't have a .Mac account nor do I want one. From what I understand, I don't need one in order to activate/use Mail. Now, when I went into Mail to create my new account, it askes me questions like POP or IMAP and ... "smtp." server and go get information from my ISP about which server my Internet mail (I use Hotmail) would be coming from into my Mac Mail. So, I contacted my ISP (T-Mobile) and asked them to provide more information about which e-mail services they support through Hotmail.

Did I do the right thing ... or should I be contacting Hotmail/MSN instead? I'm confused...

Hotmail is primarily a webmail service. However, there is a plugin that allows you to use Mail to access Hotmail. But, look--T-Nobile is your ISP. You have an email account as part of your subscription. You should be asking T-Mobile for the IMAP or POP3 settings for your T-Mobile account. You can probably get this information if you log into T-Mobile's website.

Amie · #4 June 26th, 2005, 02:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HateEternal

Are you paying for hotmail service?

If you are just doing free service you can only access hotmail through the web site. If you are paying then you can setup mail to use it. If this is the case, the information should be on their website, if you can't find it call Hotmail, not your ISP.

If you aren't paying and would like a free mail service that you can check with mail you could try gmail. www.gmail.com

if you need an invite to sign up I should have some, let me know.

I use Hotmail as my Internet mail. It's a free e-mail service. But my iBook came with a Mail application and I'd like to set it up so that I can retrieve my e-mail from Hotmail via Mail while I'm NOT connected to the Internet. Does this makes sense? Anyway, I'm confused about what I need to do and who I need to contact. When I go into the Mail application and click on "Create New Account," it asks some questions that can only be answered by my ISP (which is T-Mobile, and, yes, I pay for that). I just don't know the answers to all the Mail questions, so I'm stuck and can't set up my Mail account.

Amie · #5 June 26th, 2005, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MisterMe

Hotmail is primarily a webmail service. However, there is a plugin that allows you to use Mail to access Hotmail. But, look--T-Nobile is your ISP. You have an email account as part of your subscription. You should be asking T-Mobile for the IMAP or POP3 settings for your T-Mobile account. You can probably get this information if you log into T-Mobile's website.

No, no ... see, T-Mobile is my ISP (for wireless service on my laptop), not my e-mail provider. I don't have an e-mail account with T-Mobile. I use Hotmail, which is a free e-mail service, totally unrelated to T-Mobile. T-Mobile simply provides the Internet access service. See?

nixgeek · #6 June 27th, 2005, 05:22 PM

As far as I know, you can only use the web-based e-mail for the free accounts. There is no way to set up an e-mail program like Mail to receive e-mail from free Hotmail accounts. For that, you would have to pay and that would give you POP3 e-mail access which you can configure on Mail. Same goes for Yahoo also. This has been like this for years now.

HateEternal · #7 June 27th, 2005, 06:24 PM

RIght, with the free hotmail service you can only access it to from the webpage hotmail.com.

I am kind of confused by the post that you made, when you aren't connected to the internet you wont be able to get any new email, if you did setup mail with something like GMail you could always look at old messages when you aren't on the internet but you wouldn't be able to get new ones.

lbj · #8 June 27th, 2005, 06:38 PM

Also Amie, while you make it very clear that you use T-Mobile only as an ISP and hotmail only as an email service provider, the reality is that you are very likely also paying for an email account via T-mobile. Nearly every ISP provides free email for its paying members (there are exceptions).

I see three choices:
1--use Safari to check your email via hotmail.com
2--ask T-Mobile if in fact you are entitled to an email account with them
3--get a gmail account (10 times better than hotmail) which you can access via browser and Mail

Does that make sense?