Windows Live Essentials Updates

The programs that are part of the Windows Live package just got another update. The changes are small, as evidenced by my own usage, as well as the notices I have seen on the internet. There are some small polishes added, but if you don’t look closely, you won’t notice.

Most of the changes are bug fixes, and I can attest that one large one has been taken care of on my machines - the in-place upgrade works this time. Not one problem, stumble, or error message was seen on the upgrade. For those hoping for a 64 bit version, it’s not there yet.

I have used these applications daily since their first release, and I see small, but significant improvements in each upgrade. If only the operating systems division worked this way!

Live Mail seems to be working better. Those of you on multicore machines may not have noticed this, but when I work on my 2.8 GHz P4 , the threading of the mail program had some bugs and would frequently freeze parts of the program. The menu bars would be fully responsive, yet the side panes were frozen. This is something I only noticed on Intel machines, but since there are a few of those, it was good that it was fixed.

Live Writer, in use at this moment, is working better; again, in small ways. When marking words or phrases in bold, the cursor would have to be placed on a different line, or the mouse bolding would not stick. This is a behavior acquired a couple of revisions ago, and was very annoying.  Now also repaired.

I have seen comments about the Live Messenger program being repaired in small ways, but I have to admit I have not noticed.

There are also a couple of small enhancements (Microsoft nomenclature, not mine) to Internet Explorer because of this upgrade, and I’ll have to check it - it may be awhile however, because I am an Opera user, and use Internet Explorer only when forced. (Since Microsoft is making big claims for Acid 3 compliance with Internet Explorer 8 I am hoping to see even less need for my usage of that browser - Opera has already demonstrated compliance with Acid 3, so it should be as preferred as IE8 - wait a minute, that would be logical, so it can’t be possible!)

I haven’t done anything with Live Photo Gallery yet, so I’ll have to write about any snags there later. In all, this is a very worthwhile upgrade, as the niggling problems are enough sometimes to remove any pleasure from the use of a software program. Things are noticeably better, and this is very nice coming only a month after what Microsoft had called a major upgrade, so it is made better  through its unexpectedness.

If you use Windows, you should use these programs. They couple two things that are always useful, efficient and free!

Since there are so many already using 64 bit Windows, and so few programs that are natively 64 bit, Microsoft should recompile these for the large memory crowd - it would be a very good thing for the users and garner a great amount of good PR for Microsoft.

Kudos to the Live Essentials Team!

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Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.Carl Sagan