Hotmail now works with other e-mail accounts, even Gmail

Windows Live Hotmail has a new trick up its sleeve--one that's aimed directly at getting users with e-mail accounts on other services to use it exclusively, even if they keep that address.

That trick, which begins rolling out to Hotmail users today, lets them add accounts from other Web mail services that can be read and sent from within the Hotmail Web client.

As Hotmail's group program manager Dick Craddock writes on the Inside Windows Live blog, this functionality is something that's long been available in the Outlook software client, but not on the Web. Craddock also notes that more than 30 million Hotmail registrations have taken place where users provided another service's e-mail address to get in the door, and that these will now show up as an account you can link up to within the Web client.

More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20021386-248.html