Jon, at one time you were just going on the Internet to access your mail account. Apparently you later set up the Hotmail account. I don't know anything about Hotmail, but if it is like most over providers, when you go to desktop POP3 type setups where you use Outlook Express, etc., they mostly require SSL connections now, which means that they are blocking the old ports that were used for sending and receiving email.
Therefore the question: Can you access your account on the Internet?