Issues have been reported about push Hotmail not working consistently and after quite a bit of investigation the team has now found the cause and provides tips to get the correct push-email behaviour whilst they are working hard on the fix (server side). These issues only occur if you have your mail set to synchronize “As items arrive” in the “Sync schedule” settings and if you are also signed into Messenger in certain ways.

The workarounds for now:

- If you are signed in to Windows Live Messenger on your PC and your status is “Online” or “In a call” you could see interruption of push mail working on your device.  The workaround is to have Messenger on your PC in any state other than “Online” or “In a call”.

So to those of you who have disabled “Show me as Away when I’m inactive for…” and/or “Show me as Busy and block my alerts when I’m running a full-screen program…” : turn it on again (Tools > Options > Personal)!

- If you are signed in to Windows Live Messenger on your Windows Mobile phone you could see interruption of push mail working on your device.  The workaround is to sign out of Messenger on your Windows Mobile phone.

Very inconvenient for those who use messenger a lot from their mobile, but well ehhmm…it’s the only way for now. We’ll notify you once the issue has been fixed.

The team has also received reports about contacts synchronization and has already fixed that. And they made discovery of the download for Windows Live for Windows Mobile easier: when setting up Hotmail from Outlook Mobile, the wizard will take you to the download page if you don’t already have Windows Live for Mobile.

Windows Live For Windows Mobile Team Blog
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http://wl.windowsmobile.com (on your mobile browser)
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