Windows: Microsoft today released Windows Live Essentials 2011, a free suite of solid desktop applications ranging from Messenger and Photo Gallery to Movie Maker and Mail.
In all, Windows Live Essentials is one big, sometimes incomprehensible bucket that contains a lot of different applications of varying degrees of usefulness. In June we walked you through each of the big apps, but as a brief refresher, Windows Live Essentials includes:
- Messenger: Microsoft's same ol' instant messaging app, but with added support for social networks like Facebook.
- Photo Gallery: A photo management app that supports uploading to photo-sharing services like Facebook, Flickr, and SkyDrive.
- Movie Maker: Windows' free movie editing and publishing tool. It's actually pretty nice (especially for a free offering), and supports publishing videos to the likes of SkyDrive, YouTube, or Facebook.
- Windows Live Mesh: A file-syncing utility along the lines of Dropbox (that also integrates with SkyDrive for web-based access); also supports syncing supported program settings.
- Mail: A desktop email client that handles email, calendars, and contacts, without the extra bells and whistles of, say, Outlook.
- Writer: Powerful desktop blogging software that supports publishing to services like WordPress, Blogger, and LiveJournal. I've known bloggers who swear by it.
- Family Safety: An app that monitors your kids' web activity, lets you create whitelists for family-friendly sites.
The entire suite is available for download now from the link below. When you're installing, I'd recommend clicking the Choose the programs you want to install option so you can avoid installing, at the very least, the Bing Bar.
Windows Live Essentials 2011 is a free download for Windows only.