I would like to address the original question. For once Microsoft is taking
a hit it doesn’t deserve, first you need to differentiate between web based
mail and POP 3 accts just because you can access it from the web does not
automatically make it a web based mail there are POP 3's that can be
accessed thru web such as Gmail yahoo plus aol and I am guessing from the
posts here Lycos as well. But the reason email clients don't access web
based mails is because most web based mail services also have a for pay
service web clients are blocked from access from the server end not the
Microsoft end, simply because pop 3 accts are usually part of the for pay
service. They want you to pay for the privilege of accessing your email thru
an email client. There are however now services that do indeed offer free
pop 3 access, gmail and aol are 2 that I know of personally. There is also a
way to add a free yahoo acct to your windows live mail using a small free
application called ypops it acts as a gateway to your free yahoo service