Windows Live Hotmail has brought incoming POP3 access to the US, Canada and Brazil - something that should have happened years ago. This of course means that you'll be able to have centralized access to your mail from Yahoo, AOL, Gmail and other services. Residents of the West are behind those in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, UK and Spain, which already had incoming POP3 access.
Configuring the new feature is pretty straightforward. Log into your Hotmail account and click "Add an e-mail account" on the left side of your inbox. Then, simply provide the email address and password for your other account and choose where you want the messages to appear. Naturally, you'll also need to go and enable the POP3 services of your other account.
Then again, if you want speedier access and a more intelligent user interface, switch to Gmail and access multiple email accounts using that instead.