archGFX

current tune: the arcade fire - power out
for anyone who's considering Microsoft's Outlook Live, a word of warning:
outlook for subscription services != outlook 2003
the version of outlook you get is limited. The limitation i've found so far is that it does not include the import/export engine. at all. you can't import old pst files, you can't import from any other e-mail client, nothing. you can _open_ pst files, and copy information between them and the hotmail server, but doing so erases date information, because you're essentially e-mailing yourself the file.
Presumably, this is to prevent people from exporting all their information to a different e-mail program 1 day before their subscription expires. understandable, but it's not documented Anywhere. this is the only way to buy outlook for subscription services, but there is no feature list for the program, no comparison between it and outlook 2003, just a lot of flashy animations.
that said, outlook does do what i want, it lets me use hotmail as the rough equivalent of an exchange server, and it syncs to my phone via my fancy cable. the cable is apparently discontinued in the US, as mine had to be shipped from hong kong, but still made it to my apartment in the promised 8 days.
Another Caveat:
when you sync the phone, nokia's software gives you the option for contacts to sync all information, or only name and phone number. I chose the latter, and it did what i hoped: it skipped contacts with no phone number. this includes our extensive christmas card list. However, the next time you sync, it reads those contacts as being deleted on the phone, and deletes them from outlook. so after your initial sync, you should change your options to "update phone only". a bit awkward. fortunately, my hotmail account was down last night, so ooutlook live didn't have a chance to delete said addresses from hotmail. so i'm safe.