14 DAY TRIAL // At the end of the past week, Microsoft announced that it was killing the DAV legacy email client protocol for Windows Live Hotmail. Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol was still supported only in Outlook Express offering users the possibility to centralize their Windows Live Hotmail content into the default email desktop client of Windows XP. DAV is a protocol similar to POP3 or IMAP, permitting communications between an email client and a web-based mail server.
"As of June 30, 2008, Microsoft is disabling the DAV protocol and you will no longer be able to access your Hotmail Inbox via Outlook Express. As an alternative, we recommend that you download Windows Live Mail, a free desktop e-mail client that has the familiarity of Outlook Express and much more," a member of the Windows Live Hotmail technical Support team revealed.
The main reason for the killing of DAV is the lack of efficiency that is now associated with the legacy outlook Express protocol. Windows Live Mail is an upgrade to the email client that ships as a default component of Windows Vista, labeled under the Windows Live brand. Unlike Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail will continue to permit access to Windows Live Hotmail, but via a Microsoft proprietary protocol dubbed DeltaSync. Microsoft specified that it has no plans to offer support for DeltaSync with Outlook Express.
"We have developed a new, much more efficient protocol called DeltaSync that is far superior to DAV especially for large e-mail inboxes. It enables email clients to only download changes since the last time the client polled the email server for changes. This is much more efficient and high performing than having to download all the headers in every folder as is the case with DAV," the Windows Live Hotmail technical Support team member added.