Question about Outlook Express

I am totally non technical so please reflect that in your responses. I have an apple iPhone and we have just bought an iMac computer. A few weeks ago I had problems with sending emails on my phone and an apple advisor talked me through deleting my email account and resetting it as outlook and now i have no problem. However, when we bought the iMac I set up my hotmail account and can receive mail. I cannot send mail. I spent nearly 40 minutes on the phone with apple help desk, My outgoing email is pop3.live.com and he was trying to get my outgoing mail as stmp.live.com but it kept saying that to was offline. He suggested I contact microsoft / hotmail support which I have done. I have spent a very long time on the phone explaining my problem to various people who then advise me that I need to speak to another department , who has ultimately led me to this forum.