RSSWindows Live gets upgrade, final Essentials release
By Tim Conneally | Published November 13, 2008, 11:42 AM
Microsoft's Windows Live team today formally announced a number of upgrades to the Live platform that constitute its "next generation," a more unified experience across all the services within Windows Live.
Beginning in the coming weeks, existing Windows Live users' home.live.com page will change from the current straightforward (read: Google-ish) list of services to a social, profile-based (read: Facebook-ish) setup where all the existing Windows Live services are tied together with a central update feed.
The homepage incorporates a user's Hotmail inbox with her Spaces profile and a "What's New" feed that shows friend/contact list activity. Activity on third party sites such as Flickr, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Photobucket, and iLike can be linked to the What's New feed, and all of the Live services are more closely tied together. Data from services such as Calendar and Groups, for example, can be integrated into e-mail and instant messaging.
Also, the Windows Live Essentials "Wave 3" betas will soon be coming to an end, with the final release of the lightweight software that includes: Mail, Writer, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, Messenger, Toolbar, and Family Safety. This will finally end the over two year long testing period of the Essentials suite.
After:
Microsoft says the rollout will begin in the US in the coming weeks, and then will be launched in 48 languages and 54 countries in early 2009.
Photo Gallery is a really good piece of software. Mail is very good but not spectacular.
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|Windows Live Skydrive will now offer 25 GB of free secure online storage. That's cool
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|I just want a good email program, because I am a disabled veteran, one that is graphical, so I can send photos and write good emails...I thank everyone here for there help, and Happy Thanksgiving, I hope someday to get windows 7 or Vista Home Premium, good for my eyes, and fun to use...thank you Betanews and the people who comment on Betanews...until then have a nice week...gpgo@hotmail.com...
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|The new Live Mail is the one that will be preferred for Win7. Win7 won't ship with a mail client, but it will link you to a download for Live Mail.
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|Microsoft and 'Live' = too many cooks
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|Messenger service (coupled with WLM9) still contains too many logon errors that are left unattended - the team should fix them instead of focusing on upgrading features over and over again >.
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|Yikes!
Crud - my Hotmail inside of OE 6, which has worked fine for YEARS, suddenly stopped working. I hope to all that is holy that MS has not disabled this option.
Last email I got was that they would not do that to my account (it is a VERY long-term account)
Oh man...
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|I must agree, "Live" is one of the weakest Microsoft brands around.
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|Who cares? They suck. They've always sucked. Microsoft has NEVER had a clear direction or execution of whatever they want. The whole "Live" was a mistake and just muddied the water. You have MySpace and you have an alternative in Facebook. Anything else is just a wannabe social networking.
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|I can't wait for the huge page ads.
Disclaimer: I fooled around with home.live.com back in the day but never really used it. Same with iGoogle.
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|honestly,
utilizing these online sites is like walking on a tight rope.
whatever happened to ftp connectivity?
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