Using gmail (and other non-hotmail) mail service with MSN Messenger. If you have Windows XP you were prompted at the initial set-up to “associate a passport” with your windows user account. Something about this dialog seems to encourage many people to sign up for a hotmail account. If you already have an e-mail account or don’t want to use hotmail then there is no need to sign up for a hotmail account. All you need to do is create a passport with Microsoft for your preferred e-mail address.

Simply go to the passport website and click the link to register for a free passport. Fill out the form being certain to give the proper e-mail address. For example, if you are someonespecial@gmail.com then give that here. Before the process is complete, you will have to confirm that the e-mail address you have given works by checking your e-mail and clicking the link therein.

Once that is done you can easily associate your newly created passport with your windows XP user account. If you cancelled out of the wizard that popped up you can return to it by going into the control panel and clicking “User Accounts” and then “Change a user account.” Find the desired username in the list and choose “Change my .net Passport.” From here the process is rather intuitive.

The only thing you don’t get is the alert toast pop-ups when you receive new e-mail. Hopefully soon someone will invent a plug-in for Windows Messenger and MSN Messenger that provides the same functionality. Maybe Google will release an enhanced toolbar or feature not related to Messenger that provides the same. Either way, you can live without pop-up toasts telling you to check your e-mail. (You can!)