You're memory afaics is faulty or explanation faulty.
Having been around since 1994 and access to every single email client build released by MSFT
Microsoft never forced anyone to go to Live Mail
- Live Mail was an optional download install only program and remains so today
The same servers are used for all protocols
- Pop3 and Http
The only services (not servers) discontinued were
- WebDAV access to Hotmail accounts in Outlook Express
- Pop3 access for free Hotmail accounts (later restored)
* the former accomplished by rejecting the handshaking of email clients sending WebDav requests
* the latter by checking for a paid, current active Hotmail Plus account
There really were no XP versions of Outlook Express
OE was released in 1997 as a component of IE4 and continued through IE6. Each version of IE 4, 5.x, 6.x updated OE with a version
and/or under-the-hood update. The browser was bundled with the o/s (the email client with the browser).
--
....winston
msft mvp mail
"charlie" wrote in message
On 28/10/2012 8:43 AM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
[...]
Windows 8 forced me to switch to Thunderbird as Win 8 will not let you
set up an E-mail account if you are a POP3 acct, you need an Imap
account.
Ok, what's up with that? Why would MS decide to prevent POP3?
Because - - -
Management told the programmers to?
Microsoft would like to shut down it's POP3 servers?
Microsoft is pushing everything to the "Cloud"?
<G>
Some time ago, MS tried to get MSN users to switch from POP3 to other
alternatives. At one point, new users were forced to go to "Live Mail".
/ HTML mail. Today, even though the MS server names have changed, POP3
is still (obviously) usable if setup properly. Originally, I used POP3
because it was a bit safer than Exchange or other email schemes that
allowed automation based upon message contents. At one point, there was
a version of Outlook Express that, although never fully released, was
fairly bullet proof, easy to use, and allowed the user to, on a message
by message basis, inspect the email for embedded code, etc. without
allowing it to become active. The unreleased version continued to work
into the early win XP versions. XP retail versions were changed enough
that the unreleased version quit working properly. (Sigh!)