some people (including myself) have been having trouble with IE 5.1 and logging into hotmail. here is a workaround.
when you go to hotmail, go to the address bar and delete the part that says login, and type start/username that is whatever your username is. so if it was brodie then the whole address should look like this:
http://lc3.law5.hotmail.passport.com/cgi-bin/start/brodieas long as it has cgi-bin/start/brodie at the end it doesnt really matter, this will give you a password/username prompt pop up. interestingly it remembers your username for the duration of your IE session.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20010514055500180