Seem to have found a way through using
www.my.msn.com as a link into hotmail (rather than hotmail.com), a few extra clicks are involved and you have to look at a bit more of msn's advertising and news headlines. If this is the price for continuing to use hotmail with 10 times the storage space seems worth it...
Thanks for the concern, BRL. So for now I will stick with my trusty windows 95 set up
Bill
P.S If anyone regularly sends to yahoo / has a yahoo account be warned that mail sent from some ISP s - like BT- when you have yahoo messenger on the computer can be delayed up to 48 hours!!!