Hi, I was just wondering: If I use WINDOWS mail with a hotmail address, will my emails on the internet (hotmail.com) be deleted? Because I really like the idea of having all my emails backed up on the internet incase something goes wrong with my hard drive. With most email accounts setup in Windows Mail (WM), you can set WM to leave messages on the server. I do not know whether this will also work with hotmail since I've never configured a hotmail account to be downloaded to an email client such as Outlook Express or WM. So, I suggest you try it and see.

Rather than leave messages on the server, I would backup my email messages on an external hard drive, CD/DVD, etc. But, that's just my preference.
I may be misunderstanding the problem here but, Windows Mail will not import hotmail etc into the Wm directory. To have all of you email addresses delilered to your pc you NEED to install Window LIVE mail (free). This will ALLOW you to have your POP3 accounts and your web accounts all in the same place.I'm not a Hotmail user but I find references indicating Hotmail can be accessed via Window Mail. See http://email.about.com/od/windowsmailtips/qt/et_get_hotmail.htm; go to the part titled Access Free Windows Live Hotmail in Windows Mail with FreePOPs