I want to use Outlook for e-mail but I’m too cheap to pay for POP mail

Microsoft Outlook is probably one of the most underrated applications in Microsoft Office and yet is consistently present in most editions. I say underrated because most users seem to ignore it. But people who are in business or office work are more likely to use it. It’s just almost right up there with Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

The most common use for Outlook is as an e-mail management application. Your e-mail inbox is the first thing that you see when you open the application. Typically, in order for you to use e-mail in Outlook, you need someone to provide you with an e-mail service. This can be in the form of an ISP (Internet Service Provider) who provides you with an e-mail account. You access that account by configuring Outlook to your host’s POP (Post Office Protocol) or IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) settings or any similar protocols. Your ISP might or might not charge you for this extra service. Also, not every ISP provides e-mail service. What are our options?

Another method is to connect to your office’s very own e-mail server, assuming your company has one. In which case, you invest on server hardware and use either a proprietary or GPL license e-mail server software. Microsoft Exchange Server comes to mind. You would most likely either have an in-house specialist or pay someone a handsome fee to configure and program for you. All that, of course, means is shelling out a considerable amount of money just to use e-mail.

You argue, “I’m just a small business owner, I can’t spend that much money just to send and receive e-mail.”

You don’t but there are cheap ways, one is the aforementioned ISP. Or you sign up for one of many free web-based e-mail services. Hotmail, Yahoo! and Google Mail easily come as prime examples. Many of them already integrate many of the services you find in Outlook such as e-mail, a personal organizer, tasks manager and address book. However, being web-based means you always have to access them via a browser and make sure you are always connected to the internet. Some of these providers will let you access their mail services but for a subscription price. After all, you don’t necessarily open Outlook to check your e-mail, maybe you just want to review the inbox or check your calendar. It’s not like you connect to the internet just to use your computer all the time.

You argue, “What? I have to pay a monthly subscription fee?”

Okay, you’re still not convinced that paying someone like Yahoo! up to US$9.95 a month to access e-mail via POP. Because we can be cheapskates, we want to be economical and a domain name appended to your user name is just vanity to you. And, hey, it’s not like everyone lives in the United States. Well, maybe there’s a solution.

Outlook is a Microsoft product. Microsoft owns Hotmail. Hotmail is free. Hotmail is part of Microsoft Live. Microsoft has perfected an Outlook add-in called Outlook Connector. It also goes by the name Hotmail Connector.  It’s an add-in you install and lets you access Hotmail or Windows Live e-mail through Outlook. At the same time, you also have access to your calendar, address book, tasks and notes without having to connect to the internet.  Any changes you make in the calendar and address book offline will automatically synchronize the next time you are connected to the internet. Any e-mail you composed offline will be saved as draft or stored in the outbox until such time you are ready to send them. Likewise, if you access the Hotmail/Live account via browser in your or any other computer, the changes you made will also be synched in Outlook when it is connected online.

Because you signed up for Hotmail/Windows Live, you automatically get a SkyDrive account. SkyDrive is a cloud storage product of Microsoft’s where you can store your documents with the free 7GB of disk space they give you with an option for bigger space at a subscription rate.

If there’s one thing that is annoying with Outlook Connector, it’s that you see two accounts in the control pane in the left all the time. You will see two e-mail accounts: one is the Hotmail/Live account, the other is the local account that isn’t connected to anything. Also two calendars and two address books.  When you open Outlook, the view defaults to the local inbox which doesn’t contain anything. You can fix this in the Options setting so that it will default to look inside Hotmail/Live account.

Also, because Hotmail/Live is free, you don’t get to choose a personalized domain name for your e-mail. You will be limited to @hotmail.com, @live.com or @live.com.whatever country-code domain you live in.

This is not meant to be an advertisement to get you to use Microsoft products but it does let you know what kind of options you have to have free e-mail and use it with Outlook.