I've got my new iphone! can i set my hotmail account as the email? how do i do this?

Not directly, no. The only way I've found to get Hotmail on the iPhone is through Izymail. Be forewarned that Izymail costs $20/year, but it'll still work for free, only all your emails will be text only. Izymail will download new emails but does not sync with Hotmail (like IMAP does). If you delete mails from the iPhone, you'll still have to go into Hotmail later and erase them again. Do a Google search for Izymail