Hotmail Exchange push Email, Contacts, Calendar available now

Posted Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 11:21 am by Jason Cartwright

Microsoft have finally flipped the switch on Exchange Push for their Mail, Contacts and Calendar services. Competitor Google has offered this for months, and like many other iPhone owners who want all their info on the go, I switched to gmail to achieve this.

To enable the services simply insert your credentials and use m.hotmail.com as the server address.

So now push email, contacts and calendar is available to Windows Live users, question is, how many people will switch from Google. While Gmail is beloved by tech darlings, the reality is there’s a lot more users on Windows Live. My contact list on Windows Live Messenger is many multiple times the length of that of Google Chat.

Personally I need to run both emails for different services like Google Reader / analytics and Skydrive, but may switch Windows Live Contacts and Calendar. As shown above, I now have exchange accounts defined, Google, Work and Hotmail.

Prior to today’s launch, users would be met with a looping Password prompt, now the service has launched, this no longer occurs. Its also important to note that Exchange activesync for Hotmail supports multiple calendars that can be turned on or off in settings. These individual calendars appear as different colour calendar entries on most mobile devices.

This move is critical in preparation for Microsoft’s launch of Windows Phone 7 later this year to achieve their target of hitting both personal and business users.