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11 Mar 2010
Review Rating:
Platform: Windows XP, Windows Vista
Manufacturer: Microsoft
Size: 1.1MB
Number of Downloads: 7562
Price: Free
The Windows Live Essentials suite is a collection of useful programs. It consists of Messenger, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Family Safety and a toolbar.
Messenger can be used to send instant messages to other Windows Live users as well as playing online games with them and exchanging photos.
Longer messages are handled with Windows Live Mail that can be used to send emails from a Windows Live account or from other email providers. It has a column layout like Outlook and includes a calendar.
Live Writer is a blogging tool, which again can be used with a Windows Live blog or other blogs. It can download the blog theme for a proper preview of how the post will look. It makes adding images very easy as they can be simply pasted into the body of the blog post. It can add categories to posts and automatically send notifications of new blog posts to services like Technorati.
Photo Gallery can import photos and videos from digital cameras. They are organised by date and tags so they are always easy to find. Photos can be uploaded to the online album provided with a Windows Live account that has 25GB of space.
Movie maker can be used to edit home movies and create slide shows from photos. This is not available for Windows XP.
Family Safety can be used to limit searches and websites as well as who children can talk to online.
With this Windows Live Suite, you can now pick and choose the applications you want to install and the components will be downloaded from the Internet and installed to your computer. Some components, however, require a constant online broadband connection.
We also recommend signing up for a Windows Live account to get the most from these programs
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Do you agree?
Easy to use
Windows Live, might be Microsoft way to hook as many people as possible to its products but surely the products on offer are performing well, are popular, easy to use (particularly the Windows Live Photo application which makes a difficult task incredibly simple!). Other programs, although valid and surely maybe some would say more advanced than Windows Live, are not that easy to use: Picasa, for example, is a good program too but not as easy to use as Windows Live Photo. Not everybody is a computer wizard. Most like me, have learnt what they know by themselves, have a very basic knowledge of the computer and Windows Live offers stupid proof software for free which can be trusted to do the work. I do not need a Formula 1 car to go to the supermarket, I would not know where to load the shopping. I can get a good family Station Wagon (Estate car, for the British people) and do a lot of shopping easily and take it with me and won't need assistance either. I have a friend who has a cellphone (mobile phone) which has so many applications and functions to do just about everything but he only uses for calls and sms/mms, listening music and checking the e-mails (sometimes) If something is free, easy to use, very intuitive. As a note, I am not working for Microsoft nor I know anyone connected to that Company apart from being a product user.
Posted by: Patrizio 29 Aug 2009
Microsoft's take at simplicity
I agree, there is always a more liberating feeling of not being tied down to a vendor's service especially if choice affords "better" alternatives. However, I list "better" in quotations because we ask "better according to what standards"? I believe, if a certain software does help you become more effective, does not encroach on your privacy, is reasonable in terms of its inter-operablility and standards and is easy to use, then go ahead, use that software. Microsoft does come up with powerful software in Word, Excel and Powerpoint, who knows, maybe these other services are also okay. By the way, I do love Mozilla Firefox over the rest, but Thunderbird is a different story. I used to like it but I realized that it is actually not that open. Try exporting your mail and contacts to Microsoft Outlook or any other Mail client. You are going to get irritated.
Posted by: Gian 23 Dec 2008
Re: Microsoft's Windows Live freeware....
There's other freeware that is probably better, and doesn't hook you into the Microsoft web, such as:- Browser = Mozilla Firefox; Mail = Mozilla Thunderbird; Photo Handling = Google's Picasa; Writer = Abisource's Abiword, or Sun's OpenOffice.org free office suite. Microsoft's programs don't rate as highly as some of those others.
Posted by: Ray Sutton 16 Dec 2008