I'm curious:

I currently use Microsoft Outlook 2013 to access Outlook.com Mail/People/Calendar. For the last couple of days I have been noticing that I've been having a lot of trouble connecting to the service this way. MS Outlook 2013 stays in a "disconnected" state even after I press F9.

I've attempted to create new profiles to see if this fixes the issue, it does not. I attempted to change the server from blu-m.hotmail.com to blu165.mail.live.com (the server I got from logging into http://outlook.com from my browser) but was unable to connect to that server.

I got curious, and try to access my mail via Windows 8 Mail metro client and I have trouble connecting, sending and receiving mail as well. Logging into the web application via MSIE10 I have zero problems. Is there something happening on the back end that is preventing or causing issues with me connecting to my mail from an application?

This started just a few days ago and I haven't changed anything on my PC - except for the last batch of patches come to think about it...

EDIT: I access my Outlook.com account from several Windows devices. Windows 8 Desktop and Laptop, and ASUS VivoTab, and my Windows Phone 8 device.