Rick,
Yes, I have gmail working. Yahoo is the one that requires a paid account--I don't believe there is a paid Hotmail account.
I have not been able to connect to Hotmail (now Outlook.com) either. I am using the same parameters I use with Outlook Express, and I can get a connection but the mails are not sent. Since there is only a generic error, I have no idea why it isn't working. I have tried every variation of parameters I can think of also with no luck.
I also have a now discontinued program "SMTP Diagnostics" and it can't send using Hotmail either, nor is it giving me any meaningful errors.
....................
SMTP Diagnostics Report
Trial version. Visit
http://www.smtpdiagnostics.com/ for more information.
4/4/2013 1:31:11 PM
Elapse time: 0:00:00.701
....................
[0:00:00.051] Connecting to mail server.
[0:00:00.110] Connected.
[0:00:00.090] 220 BLU0-SMTP147.phx.gbl Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.4675 ready at Thu, 4 Apr 2013 13:31:12 -0700
[0:00:00.000] EHLO Matrix
[0:00:00.090] 250-BLU0-SMTP147.phx.gbl Hello [68.7.204.149]
[0:00:00.000] 250-TURN
[0:00:00.000] 250-SIZE 41943040
[0:00:00.000] 250-ETRN
[0:00:00.000] 250-PIPELINING
[0:00:00.000] 250-DSN
[0:00:00.000] 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
[0:00:00.000] 250-8bitmime
[0:00:00.000] 250-BINARYMIME
[0:00:00.000] 250-CHUNKING
[0:00:00.000] 250-VRFY
[0:00:00.000] 250-TLS
[0:00:00.000] 250-STARTTLS
[0:00:00.000] 250 OK
[0:00:00.000] AUTH LOGIN
[0:00:00.090] 530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first
[0:00:00.000] 161: 530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first
[0:00:00.010] QUIT
[0:00:00.100] 221 2.0.0 BLU0-SMTP147.phx.gbl Service closing transmission channel
[0:00:00.000] Disconnected.
....................
I have also just spent a couple of hours trying to find more info on detecting specific CDO errors, but without any success.
I did stumble upon using xbrowse( oErrorMsg ) to see all the properties of the error object, but it wasn't much help.
I also successfully sent email using my very old Compuserve mail which is now AOL.
It's a challenge.
James