Well am back to trying blogging. It’s not like I wouldn’t want to but life sometimes has a way of stopping you from doing the stuff you like.

Anyway, in my obsession with tech I’ve downloaded the new Windows Live Beta to test all the features this app-pack contains. Now I have to say I don’t like Microsoft software in general. Part of it is connected to the the fact that their software is closed and usually not very stable (Windows lol). But with the Windows Live suit MS may have stumbled upon something. The package consists of:

• Messenger
• Writer
• Mail
• Photo Gallery
• A MS Live toolbar
• Some Parental control enhancements

Now this line-up doesn’t seem to be anything special and the only reason I wanted to try it in the first place is my mentioned tech obsession. The fact is though that for a common pc user these apps could have some added value. The messenger is a nice upgrade to an already established platform – adds some new sharing functionality, it’s less buggy and has a much more polished feel to it. The writer is one thing that could end up be a killer app. This app is technically a client based blog environment that allows you to add posts to your

blog located on some of the most common blog sites. I have actually written this post using writer and it was capable of reading out the style I have on the page, publish using a single button and lot’s more. It is definitely much more powerful then web-based wywsig editors. Live mail is actually a new much better and powerful Outlook Express. What does this mean? Well for one thing you got a new much better UI, better performance, better handling of contacts but what really makes it a top notch mail client is it’s seamless integration with Live Mail / Hotmail web services. The only thing what it really lacks is calendaring support but hey – we got Outlook for that. Photo Gallery is an enhanced picture viewer for Windows. It has some nice functionality similar to Google Picasa or iPhoto on the

Mac but again the important feature is the integration with the online Live.com services. The other stuff (Toolbar, Parental controls) are of no use to me so no attention to those.

From using these tools I feel that Microsoft is making a bid for the people really using web services for most of their computing. There is a war brewing between three major players. We got Microsoft with the whole Live suit – Mail, Calendaring, Pictures, Blogs, Social networking, we got the package from Google and Yahoo as well. Currently I am a Google user and these Ms apps aren’t really enough to make me switch and go through the painful process of migrating. On the other hand I welcome the initiative and effort on MS side and I will be watching how these evolve.