[Korvac]

Do you know if this is a web based e-mail account or a POP3 e-mail account? If he is using outlook to access it then I would think you were talking about a POP3 account, but I though hotmail was a web-based service. Outlook typically works with POP3 accounts and downloads your e-mail from a POP3 e-mail server so that once you have downloaded your mail you can always access it offline. Web-based e-mail services like yahoo and hotmail usually require you to be on-line to check your messages, but I know with yahoo you can pay extra to get a POP3 account. I don't know if this helps at all, but in summary, POP3 you read messages offline, web-based you have to be on-line.