Come September 1st, 2009, Microsoft will kill the Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol for Windows Live Hotmail. In just three months, users running Outlook, Outlook Express, or Entourage in order to grab their emails from Hotmail via DAV will no longer be able to access their messages. Microsoft explained that DAV was obsolete when it came down to handling large inboxes, and that there were evolved alternatives, including POP3 and the Office Outlook Connector.

“Outlook, Outlook Express, and Entourage have historically used the DAV protocol to access Hotmail. Because the DAV protocol is an older communications method, it doesn’t work very efficiently for processing large inboxes such as the one you may have in Hotmail. Because Hotmail now provides you with ever-growing storage, we’ve developed alternative communications methods that are more efficient and better able to accommodate large volumes of archived mail,” revealed Irene Lee from the Windows Live team.

Lee stressed that the retirement of DAV should in no way pose a problem to end users, especially since they had free alternatives to get the contents of the inboxes into an email client of their choosing. Microsoft finished rolling out POP3 support for Windows Live Hotmail worldwide in March 2009. Designed to bridge Office Outlook with Hotmail, the Office Outlook Connector is available as a free download from the software giant.

“If you use Microsoft Office Outlook to view Hotmail, download Office Outlook Connector (it’s free) to continue accessing your Hotmail within Outlook 2003 or 2007. If you’re using Outlook 2002, you’ll need to change the settings in your Outlook program,” Lee added. “If you use Outlook Express to view Hotmail, you can download Windows Live Mail (recommended) for free, or change your settings in Outlook Express to continue accessing your Hotmail there. If you use Entourage to view Hotmail, you’ll need to change the settings in Entourage to continue receiving Hotmail messages there.”

Office Outlook Connector 12.1 is available for download here.
Windows Live Essentials Mail is available for download here.