Tip 220: Microsoft Office Outlook Live (MOOL)

MOOL is no longer available. The MOOL service was replaced by the free Outlook Hotmail Connector, which works with any Hotmail Live account.
Earlier today Microsoft announced the availability of Microsoft Office Outlook Live (MOOL). What is it and do you need it?

MOOL is a Hotmail subscription service that supplies a license to Outlook 2003 and the MSN Outlook connector, along with a subscription to an extra storage Hotmail account. The account has the same features as Hotmail plus – 2GB storage space and the ability to send large messages, along with antispam and antivirus filtering.

If you have MSN premium and Outlook 2002/2003 you don't need MOOL, as you already have the features supplied by MOOL. The connector won't work with older versions of Outlook or Hotmail plus accounts.

Why would you want to pay $60 ($45 until April) for this service? If you want to use Hotmail to sync two different computers you can sign up and install the connector. The connector allows you to set the MSN/Hotmail message store as your default pst and syncs the local store with the MSN/Hotmail servers. This means appointments with reminders that are created online will fire in Outlook and appointments you create in Outlook will sync with the server so you can access then using the Hotmail web interface.

Very small businesses can use MOOL to share calendars and contacts between employees. At $5 a month per user, it's less expensive than many hosted exchange services and offers some of the same features.

Outlook Hotmail Connector (Slipstick)

Published January 20, 2005. Last updated on June 7, 2021.