Shoutbox

no. most people have POP3 mail, which is the protocoll used for mail storage and retrival.

Thunderbird is great for these types of accounts. One from and ISP, University, MSgplus.net etc.

But Hotmail and Gmail don't support Pop3/ they are web based, and Thunderbird can't access webbased email.

But you CAN get rograms, like Pop Goes the Gmail and Hotmail Popper and YahooPops, that sit in your system tray and act as a proxy between you and your webmail, which allows you to use programs like THunderbird and OE.