Windows Live Essentials Beta – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Windows Live Essentials products on first view are unfortunately confusing because there are so many included with the suite – and it’s not exactly easy to distinguish what’s local app and what’s a web app. And then it gets even more confusing when some apps are a hybrid of local and web.

Here’s a basic rundown of Live products solely concentrating on what you can physically install in Windows:

• Windows Live Photo Gallery

  Description: Photo management

• Windows Live Mail

  Description: Email and calendaring client

• Windows Live Movie Maker

  Description: A basic video editor

• Windows Live Messenger

  Description: An instant messenger for Windows Live, formerly known as MSN.

• Windows Live Messenger Companion
  
  Description: An add-on for the Internet Explorer web browser that inputs social sharing via Windows Live Messenger as you browse web sites.
• Windows Live Writer
  
  Description: A blog editor for Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, Blogger and so on.
• Windows Live Family Safety

  Description: Parental tools for safer internet use.

• Bing Bar

  Description: A Bing.com toolbar.

• Windows Live Sync

  Description: A program that synchronizes files between Windows PCs using the Internet.

• Microsoft Office Outlook Connector
  
  Description: Connects a Windows Live/Hotmail account to the full Microsoft Outlook client, and also allows for synchronization between your Windows Live account and Outlook itself.
• Microsoft Silverlight
  
  Description: Microsoft’s version of Adobe Flash.

Yeah, that’s a lot to take in a single sitting.

The web products, meaning the products you don’t install on your computer and only exist on the internet, are as follows for Live:

(Note that for each link you must login with a Windows Live ID, a.k.a. a Hotmail.com or Live.com email address.)

• Hotmail

  Description: An email service.

• Messenger

  Description: An instant messaging service.

• Office

  Description: A document editor, spreadsheet app and a few other office-type things, all on the Internet. This is not to be confused with Microsoft Office. Office Live is free.

• SkyDrive

  Description: Online storage of files.

• Photos

  Description: Photo sharing service.

Now to be honest, I’m not even sure that I have all the products listed because there are so many of them – but I think I covered them all.

It’s most likely true these are the only four locally-installed products you’re interested in:

• Windows Live Mail
• Windows Live Photo Gallery
• Windows Live Writer
• Windows Live Messenger

..so I’m going to concentrate on those four.

Windows Live Mail

This is the second best product in the suite, no question. It has notable improvements, the ribbon interface is great, the way you compose emails and use calendaring is improved, and it’s a stable solid product even in Beta form.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

A decent upgrade from the old version. The "Share" tab now allows you to post to SkyDrive, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and of course Live Spaces very easily. Decent product and stable.

Note that if you have a ton of photos, on first launch this software will "think" for a little while before getting to the main interface as it indexes all your photos.

Windows Live Writer

Vastly improved over its predecessor. If you like to blog, you need this. Yes, I said need. WLW is the #1 blogging tool on the planet, and Microsoft made it even better with the ribbon interface. Fantastic software, solid and stable. This is the best product in the Live suite of products.

Windows Live Messenger

The current beta version of this is absolutely horrific. Buggy, unstable, and almost unusable. Even closing the program takes a while to complete. It’s just awful. I’m sure the bugs will be attended to for the official release, but if you use WL Messenger at all now, don’t upgrade to the beta.

If you don’t use Messenger…

…then it’s safe to download the beta software and start using it.

If you use the Messenger…

…wait until the official release, because you cannot mix and match current Live with Live Beta. You have to go with one or the other.