There are a large number of mail programs available for the Mac. Mac Mail is a very nice program. Thunderbird is also excellent (in my opinion a better email client, but it is slower to load than Mail). You will find many others if you search around.
In all cases, these are clients that attach to an email server via either POP3/SMTP or IMAP4. To use this with Hotmail, you will need to sign up for (and pay for) their premium service, which gives you access to their email servers, vs. just their web servers.
By the way, I don't know if this deal is still available, but you might consider signing up for a dial up account with the cheapest provider you can find instead of taking out a premium package with Hotmail. DIAL UP??? you snort, in this age of broadband? Yes, dial up. Here is the reason why. Dial up is getting really, really cheap. I get Mindspring dialup for $6.95 / month. With your dial up access, you also get access to the dial up provider's email servers. Do you see where this is going?
So, keep your broadband (I am guessing that they don't provide you email or you would be using it), add the CHEAPEST dial up you can get, and then set up your shiny new Mac email client to access your dial up's email servers OVER YOUR BROADBAND LINK (once you are on the internet, whether dial up or not, you can get to pretty much any IP address). Voila! You now have email access via direct client-server connection for less than the premium services from Yahoo and Hotmail (I think - haven't looked at their pricing for a while).
I do this - I keep a "legacy" email account on Mindspring that I have had forever, pay $6.95 / month to keep it active, and access it via my broadband. Works like a champ.
To get your hotmail email to this dial up account, you should be able to enable email forwarding on Hotmail, such that any email that comes in automatically gets forwarded elsewhere. I haven't checked Hotmail, but most email systems provide forwarding. This is the last piece of the puzzle. Now all your Hotmail email is flowing into your dial up account and down onto your Mac's email client.
Tricky, but quite effective.