

Windows Live Essentials 2011 out - wiks
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/10/windows-live-essentials-2011-brings-good-bad-in-equal-measure.ars

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raganwald
Not a criticism per se, but when I saw the title of this post, I had a "Lisa
Simpson Moment:" I know what each of these words means, but when you put them
together...

Windows, Live, Essentials, 2011, Out.

I hope I get it now. _Windows_ is the OS, Windows _Live_ is not the OS but
"The collective brand name for a set of services and software products from
Microsoft", Windows Live _Essentials_ is "A suite of freeware applications by
Microsoft which aims to offer integrated and bundled e-mail, instant
messaging, photo-sharing, blog publishing, security services and other Windows
Live entities." and Windows Live Essentials _2011_ is a release of Windows
Live Essentials, so Windows Live Essentials 2011 _out_ means that:

 _The 2011 release of "A suite of freeware applications by Microsoft which
aims to offer integrated and bundled e-mail, instant messaging, photo-sharing,
blog publishing, security services and other entities that are part of a set
of services and software products from Microsoft that are branded to tie in
with the OS" has been released._

The way that each word in "Windows Live Essentials 2011" segments the brand
neatly from left to right makes it feel like it was designed by a marketing
ontologist who sees everything as part of a great pyramid of brands and
expects customers to view everything in the same way and not as individual
products with their own identities.

~~~
thwarted
There has to be a word better than "Essentials" for Microsoft to use in this
branding context. Because all I can think about is how, if these things are
what Microsoft considers "essential", are they not included in the base
install.

~~~
juxtaposition
The reason for excluding essential services is because including them leads to
monopoly accusations.

In many countries it is illegal to ship Windows with IE preinstalled and set
as the default browser. Instead, new copies of Windows offer a download window
which asks you if you want to install IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera.

Personally, I think this is insane.

~~~
xpaulbettsx
That and it means that Windows Live Essentials isn't tied to the Windows OS
release schedule so they can update it more often.

~~~
thwarted
Isn't the release schedule for Windows OS updates once a month (on a Tuesday,
I believe)?

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altano
Windows Live Photo Gallery is way more of an improvement than I was expecting.
I'm pleasantly surprised.

I really wish Windows Live Mesh did incremental syncing but now that I'm
syncing my OneNote notebooks to Office Live I'm less concerned.

~~~
nlawalker
What do you mean by incremental syncing?

The thing I like about Mesh is that I feel like I have control over my files
and where they go. The files "live" on my hard drives and are synchronized as
a service, and can be synchronized to the cloud (SkyDrive) if I want. With
"Office Live" (which, unless you're using the small business service, is
really just a name used to refer to SkyDrive + Office Web Apps), the documents
live full-time on the cloud, and any other copies that might be floating
around are duplicates.

Documents are just as "secure" in either case, since someone guessing my Live
password gives them access in both cases, but with Mesh, the files are "mine."

It's mostly a question of whether you synchronization managed through the app
or through a separate "service" like Mesh. OneNote is kind of an odd duck in
this respect compared to Word, Excel etc. because it it autosaves and it
relies on a set of files and folders rather than discrete single-file
documents, so it kind of makes sense to let OneNote take care of itself when
it comes to syncing. However, I like regarding my files as files in a
filesystem so I can manage them that way - I'm free to easily email a OneNote
section file by attaching it, or maintain the files with my own backup
processes rather than relying solely on the cloud's.

In my opinion, Microsoft should ditch the Office Live branding (except for the
small business version, which is entirely different) because it's confusing
and it's just a semantic repackaging of SkyDrive + Office Web Apps. OneNote
should delegate its synchronization functionality to Mesh. MS has some good
services but they are more focused on branding everything as a discrete
product with a bright, shiny name than they are in presenting users with a
coherent story.

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seltzered
Thanks for posting this, as much as I hate MS at times, I was starting to get
frustrated with picasa and have been migrating my family to use live photo
gallery lately.

UPDATE: I'm not liking how Live Photo Gallery won't let you create "albums"
(like picasa) instead of requiring you to create folders/copy photos instead.
Is iPhoto this way too?

~~~
altano
Why not use tags for grouping photos? They're much more flexible.

~~~
seltzered
The flexibility of tags makes sense, but this means that I then have to type
in the same tag if I want to do multiple sparse collections of photos across
folders. It's unintuitive compared to the picasa/iphoto workflow of dragging
photos straight into an album.

Perhaps this could work if one could drag a group of photos to the sidebar
containing the tag, but then that's bending the meaning of tagging.

Overall, I don't see why live photo gallery needs to break a workflow most
folks are already familiar with (raw photos in folders/albums/tags). This
organization is already used for flickr, picasa, iphoto (judging from
screenshots), etc.

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sliverstorm
I feel really bad knowing that from the level of polish WLE has, some poor
souls working on it care and really want to feel good about their product, and
are putting a lot of effort in.

I feel bad, you see, because as best I can tell WLE is a stillborn idea, and
doomed to fail :(

~~~
mhansen
Why do you think it's doomed to fail?

