Good news for your guys and gals who have been wanting to consolidate other e-mail accounts into Hotmail. (You know, like most other e-mail services have been able to do for, say ever.) This has been available for Hotmail users elsewhere but just opened up to the U.S., Canada and Brazil. Go figure. The process is as straightforward as it could be, and you can now push multiple services through one Windows Live account to your Windows Mobile phone.

Windows Live via Seattle PI

Ever have an e-mail you know you sent just seem to sit in your outbox?

Turns out you're not crazy. At least not because of this. Fellow WM Expert George Ponder has turned us on to a post over at Smartphone Thoughts that helps shed light on the whole thing.

It turns out there is a bug in Windows Mobile 6.1 that can keep messages in you outbox for good. It goes like this:

• When you send an e-mail, your phone attempts to use the specified SMTP server name. (On my AT&T phone, it's CWMX.com, a holdover from the Cingular days.) Think of that as Mailman 1.
• If Mailman 1 isn't available, for whatever reason — I like to think he's enjoying a tall cold one on the beach — Windows Mobile 6.1 looks for an alternate SMTP server. That'd be Mailman 2. But if there's no alternate server listed (has there every been?), and your phone can't connect with the first server (that beach/beer thing again), then that e-mail gets kicked into a perpetual outbox loop. Even when your phone reconnects later, that e-mail's still stuck, unsent.

The Microsoft readme file (read the entire thing after the jump) is a little more ominous:

This behavior is associated with a feature that is introduced in Windows Mobile 6.1. The feature allows for mobile operators to specify an alternate SMTP server name that is used if e-mail messages cannot be sent by using the user-specified SMTP server name. If the mobile operator does not specify an alternate SMTP server name and if the Windows Mobile 6.1-based device does not connect, the e-mail account is corrupted and cannot send e-mail messages.

How do we fix this? With a simple download. Hit up Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.1 POP and IMAP Send Mail Patch page. You can either install from your desktop or directly onto your phone as a cab file. Your phone will immediately reset, and all will be right in the world. Note that if you hard-reset your phone, you'll probably have to re-apply this patch.

The bug applies to IMAP and POP mail, but not Exchange mail or SMS/MMS text messages, and it affects touchscreen and non-touchscreen phones. If all of this is Greek to you, go ahead and apply it.

Fair warning: Microsoft says anything that's stuck in your outbox will now be sent. So if you have any e-mails with the subjects "Honestly, it was just dinner," "Dear boss, screw you," or "I promise I'll have the money on Tuesday" in there, now would be a good time to clean them out.

Obligatory rant: Why have none of the wireless carriers made notice of this yet? (Edit: HTC just sent out a message on its Twitter feed a few minutes after we first posted this.) It's just one more disconnect in the strange relationship between the carriers and Microsoft. And for more about that, be sure to check out the latest WM Experts Podcast, in which Dieter and Malatesta dive deep into that dysfunctional family.

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