Software :: Make A POP Account Look Like IMAP?

I have a free Hotmail account I still use off and on. Last time I checked, Hotmail's free service allows only POP access.I also have a desktop, laptop, and mail/file server. I'd like to view my email on both the desktop and laptop. The obvious problem is, with Hotmail's POP, the messages are downloaded and saved locally by whatever reader downloaded them.Obviously, I can't change how the Hotmail servers operate. So, with the limitation that I can't touch those servers, is anyone familiar with a method to masquerade the Hotmail account as IMAP?

I'm looking for as many ideas as I can get, but what I've considered trying is this:1. Create an email account on my local mail server2. Find a command-line utility that I can use with cron to pull the messages from Hotmail3. Store those messages in the created account above4. Configure my local mail server to handle IMAP for the created accoun5. Set up all my mail readers to use the created account for incoming mail instead of connecting directly to Hotmail6. Set up all my mail readers to use the Hotmail servers for any outgoing mail related to for that account.I'm not sure step 2 will work like I imagine. I haven't looked yet to see what utilities are available. So, before I start messing with things, I wanted to see if anyone else had some better ideas.

Or, even better, if anyone knows of someone that has tackled this problem before and has a pre-packaged solution for me to look at or install.EDIT:I read somewhere that you can configure where Thunderbird stores its mail. That would be a simple, elegant solution by having all the mail readers save and read mail from the file server. But when I went looking for that option in Thunderbird, I didn't see it. So I was either looking in the wrong place, didn't realize it when I saw it, or I'm just dense.