Microsoft Live Essential Beta Available For Download

microsoft live essential Microsoft Live Essential Beta Available For Download

The Beta version of new Microsoft Live Essential has been made available for download by Microsoft last week. The powerful but fairly low profile (given the fact that MS product rarely got coverage but tech blogs) is specifically designed for only Windows Vista and Windows 7 (going to disappoint Windows XP users), focus on cloud services integration as well as simplify the everyday task.

Microsoft Live Essentials provide you the desktop tools for the most frequently task done only daily basis although not all is necessarily valuable to most. It got Messenger for chatting, Photo Gallery to manage your photo, Mail as email client, Movie Maker for movie editing, Writer to compost blog post to various blogging platform , Family Safety to monitor internet usage, and Toolbar, Microsoft Office Outlook Connector to bring Hotmail and Live Calendar to your Outlook email client, Office Live Add-in, and Microsoft Silverlight.

With focus to integrate existing cloud services in use, Windows Live Essential is now able to connect to various cloud services and social networking websites such as Youtube, Flickr, Facebook and etc. The addition of what could be seen as the biggest enhancement of Windows Live Essential is timely when integration between various web services is common to other services, and very critical to appeal to the mass.

Most tools also have undergone quite extensive modification to simplify the task to get job done. Backing the storage of most tools above is Windows Live Skydrive, on the free on cloud storage with up to 25GB space.

If you new to Windows Live Essential, the video below should provide you an adequate overview about this service.

Windows Live Essentials

live essential Windows Live Essentials

Windows Live Essential is a collaboration suite developed by Microsoft under its Windows Live services. It consist of 5 desktop applications above that available freeĀ  Live users.

I’m first using these applications in November when I’m exploring the whole Windows Live package. At the end of the day, I stick only with Windows Live Writer and Windows Live Mail. I keep the Window Live Messenger, although I rarely using it. I have Picasa 3 installed, so I keep the Photo Gallery aside.

Microsoft has done a quite good job when it come to desktop/Windows based application unlike its ‘cloud application’. It is easy to use and straigtforward application.

Windows Live Mail is a desktop email client such as Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird but with fewer feature. While Windows Live Writer is a blogging tool where you can write and post any document directly to your blog from your desktop. It has become my default blogging editor due to the simplicity. After the first release, it got another 3 new very useful plugins. This final version should have all plugins made available, so no upgrade required.

On messenger, please be aware that there is a bug that prevent the webcam from working properly. So you might check the forum before using it.

If you’re looking for free collaboration and productivity suite for your desktop, Windows Live Essential is a quite good choice . Go get them.

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