New Windows Live Essentials beta

[theheyes]

I couldn’t see a thread on this so here goes…

As previously announced, this release of Essentials is focused on two things: connecting Windows 7 to the cloud services you already use, and making everyday tasks simpler, so that you can do more on your PC.

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials-beta

Connecting Windows 7 to the cloud

We’ve designed Essentials to connect your Windows experience to the web services you already use – not just the ones from Microsoft. The new betas of Windows Live Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail, Writer, and Messenger connect to photo and video sharing (SkyDrive, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, SmugMug), social networking (Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin), email (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail), blogging (Spaces, WordPress, Blogger), and document productivity (Office Web Apps) services. And the new Windows Live Sync keeps your files synchronized across multiple PCs and in the cloud. You can even directly access your PC over the web with Sync's new remote desktop feature.

Making everyday tasks simpler and enabling new possibilities

People like to get creative on their PCs as much as they like seeing what everyone else has been up to. Whether it’s Retouch, Panoramic Stitch, or Photo Fuse in Photo Gallery, Auto Movie in Movie Maker, or photo email in the new Windows Live Mail, we think you’ll be excited by the new additions to Essentials that make advanced tasks, well, easy. If you haven’t yet tried Photo Fuse to merge together the best of several photos, it’s a lot of fun.

I was reading the other day that the new messenger might offer a hint of the Windows 8 UI (the Segoe fonts, think Windows 7 phone)

Anyway if it's any good or complete trash let us know because I've not tried it yet.

 

[theheyes]

Well I got around to installing it. Installer crashed the first time and the Bing toolbar annoyed me so not off to a good start. The first thing I did with messenger was revert back to the classic window. The social networking stuff doesn't interest me either so I'm basically back to what I had albeit with tabs and nicer animations, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Moviemaker is the only other Live app I really use and I've noticed a few nice features added to that.

 

[theheyes]

Uninstalled mine too - none of my messenger contacts worked!