Thunderbird & Hotmail

I have been having trouble in getting Thunderbird 3 to pull down emails from Hotmail, it wasn’t until after a bit of googling revealed a french site that showed the screenshots, so, as is my duty to share, here are the relevant screen-shots

• Tools > Account Settings, click on the hotmail account that you want to use, then click on ‘Server Settings’.
  • Server name – pop3.live.com
  • Port number – 995
  • Connection Security – SSL/TLS
  • Authentication Method – Normal Password

  • 

    Thunderbird Hotmail account setup (I)

• From the same window, click on Outgoing Server (SMTP), Click on ‘Add’, a ‘SMTP Server’ dialog box appears
  • Description – hotmail
  • Server Name – smtp.live.com
  • Port – 25
  • Connection Security – SSL/TLS
  • Authentication Method – Normal Password
  • User name – your hotmail user id

  • 

    Thunderbird Hotmail SMTP Setup

• Go back to the Webmail item on the left pane of the same window, to see the summary of the ‘Account Settings’
  • Outgoing SMTP server – hotmail – smtp.live.com

  • 

    Thunderbird Hotmail final setup

Then you’re done with. No need to get an extra add-on tool to do this for you. And you know what, it’s faster!!! W00t!

Email racket

I suspect very strongly that there is an email client racket going on…. I was approached by someone who uses Windows Live Mail (this person is running Windows 7), and every now and then, Windows Live Mail throws up a stinker when trying to connect to Google’s Mail server….by prompting for a password as “it does not recognize the account being valid“….

Like myself, I use Thunderbird, and Google’s Mail functionality works like a charm, but when attempting to pull down from Hotmail, it kicks up saying it cannot pull down the emails from hotmail…. After I explained that to this person, and got that person to see the conclusions….

This lead me to wonder, I have to get this off my chest…

Are Microsoft and the open source Mozilla are squaring up a subtle battle between each other? But who suffers in silence and at who’s cost? The end-users such as this unfortunate person who has to put up with the frustration of the relentless bickering…

My take… Live Mail is developed in such a way to throw up a temperamental tantrum with connecting to Google…

Of course credit is due to the developers of the Thunderbird plugin which enables to pull down the emails from Hotmail, every now and then this plugin has to be updated due to protocol changes (by Hotmail) where Thunderbird does not understand the Hotmail’s protocol for talking to each other….and hence have to be updated regularly…

Mozilla’s relationship with Google seems obviously cosy and hence works like a charm…. but when it comes to pulling emails down from Hotmail…

And likewise, Windows Live mail can pull down emails from other non-Google servers (I suspect it would work a charm with Hotmail in this case)

sigh… you just cannot win…

This is quite a possible and plausible theory that I’ve suspected for a very long time….Hmmmm….

Hotmail behind the scenes

This article here has to be the most interesting because it highlights what is going on behind the scenes in the hotmail arena. The management of the servers and dealing with potential issues is what every IT guy should strive for.

The size and scope of maintaining hotmail, no doubt might look overwhelming and a stress/pressure point of headaches when issues arise, also pulling all-nighters when patching/maintaining the servers. The astronomical disk space required is measured in petabytes which is 1,000 Terabytes which is 1,000,000 Gigabytes…phew..

The one thing that is not mentioned is what OS are they running it on? It was mentioned a long time ago that FreeBSD was used…may be ironical for a Microsoft crowd..I often wonder… hmmm…

Not again….

Well, you know how I feel about mass-forwarded emails…this one has to be the lowest of lowly email hoaxes I ever come across…. WAKE THE F&%# UP PEOPLE!

Am so angry at the amount of time spent on reading the junk!

The email subject was titled (by the way, this was copied/pasted into here)

‘FW: 2 photos BEFORE Crash of A330 Air France during aTrans-Atlanticflight between Rio to Paris’

I was there going uh huh, hmmm….(notice the spelling on the subject line, aTrans-Atlanticflight all one word….hmmmm) went on to read it, quietly went off to check out the source, by googling here

Uh huh, yup, you’ve guessed it, tis a fake, if anyone was smart enough to look closely at the first picture, to see a woman, in handcuffs…. come on people what’s wrong with you, you thrive on forwarding crap without thinking!

WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO BELIEVE EVERYTHING THEY WANT TO SEE OR HEAR OR THINK? Grrrrrr!

Gaaahhhhhh!

Here’s the link if you care to read it!

I aint gonna repeat everything as I said in the first posting entry titled ‘Oh dear…’ I’ve got better things to do than to waste energy in shooting down the person responsible cos its more than likely the original source/sender of the email (which by the way, has been removed from the nested forwards!) is an non-existent email account. A common spamming technique!

Sick twisted minds at work gloating at clogging up the internet with mass-forwards and getting a perverted kick out of it and oh yeah making right idiots of those who fell for it and have nothing better to do then forward it on…GET REAL!

Just to follow up on this…. see here

To quote “PAT has fallen hook, line and sinker for a hoax email, and to add to its embarrassment, has failed to appreciate that while the flight 447 disaster occurred at night, the images represent the daytime fictional break-up of Oceanic Flight 815.”

Oh dear…

I happened to receive an email (the ones with loads of forwards…) Read more »