Hotmail does not provide for POP3 email on new free accounts, so you can't use OE or Outlook with them.

There are "extra cost" premium Hotmail accounts available in most US areas that permit using POP3. "Legacy" hotmail accounts that are associated with older MSN accounts can still use POP3, at least for now. They whine a lot about it, and would "prefer" that new MSN and/or all Hotmail accounts use web mail. (They apparently benefit from all the extra advertising they can foist on you with web mail.)

At least in the US, so far as I know, any MSN or Hotmail email account, POP3 or otherwise, can be accessed via web mail, using your browser, simply by logging in. We use primarily POP3 and our accounts are set up on POP3 accessible servers; but we can log in on the web, using a browser, for the web version, and do occasionally when there's a problem with the service.

You should be able to access any active email account from any location and with any machine that can get on the web. Otherwise the travellin' salesmen in the motel would have a tough time checking their email. That means that if you can get on the web through any ISP, you should be able to access any email account, even if its with a different provider, as long as the account is still an active one. They'll just think you're spending the night in some hotel.

Whether your roomie can change ISPs and keep his email address isn't really a tech question here. It's a matter of what your contract with the current connection provider will let him do. Sometimes you'll get a better (more specific) answer from the competitor to whom you'd like to switch than you will from the one that has the service and the exisiting email addy; so you should put the question to both if possible. It likely will cost something to have two services (the new connection and the old email account) but if it can be done it may not be unreasonable.

Some DSL providers have advertised here (US) that you can switch to their service and keep any existing email address. I haven't been able to get enough info from any of them to know exactly how they manage it, or whether it is factually true, but at least their advertising depts think it is (or that they can get by with claiming it is until they get you screwed into their service).

Probably, only your broadband provider knows the real answers to your questions; and if they're like the ones I've encountered here, you're unlikely to get past the marketing people to get to anyone who could tell you. (And their marketing people already told him/her NOT to tell you.)

John