Press release
Free software and services connecting your Windows 7 PC to the Cloud
24 June 2010 - Microsoft Corp. today announced the public availability of the new Windows Live Essentials beta - providing a free suite of services that makes it simple for consumers to create and share polished photos and movies, organize email and stay in touch with their closest friends. The Windows Live Essentials suite of services includes Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Sync, Messenger, Mail, Writer, Sync and Family Safety.
As the way in which people create, organise, connect and share with each other continues to shift towards the cloud, the PC remains a powerful hub for the many important activities people do on their PC. The new Windows Live Essentials beta brings the best of the cloud and the PC together, completing the Windows 7 experience and keeping consumers in control of their content and how they choose to share.
"We are excited about how the new Windows Live Essentials beta services complement the Windows 7 experience and bring together the power of the PC and cloud for Windows customers across the globe," said David Law, Product Marketing Manager Windows Live, Microsoft UK.
Available today, consumers can download the Essentials beta suite which includes significant updates to Windows Live Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail and Sync, helping consumers get more out of what they are already doing online to improve everyday tasks. Updates in this release include:
- Windows Live Messenger: The new Messenger provides customers with enhanced ways to have richer and more meaningful conversations including HD video chat, as well as a new social experience that brings together customers and their friends' social networks and sharing experiences to give them the best and richest way to stay in touch with their closest friends.
- Windows Live Photo Gallery: With new Photo Gallery includes features like Photo Fuse, which allows you to take the best parts of multiple photos and combine them into one "perfect" photo with an easy-to-use editing tool, or Facial Recognition, which allows Photo Gallery to automatically identify people in your photos based on past tags, it's easy to quickly find the perfect photo you want to share.
- Windows Live Movie Maker: The new Movie Maker provides you with simple, polished ways to share photos and video with the people you care about. Consumers now have new Auto Movie themes that allow you to add transitions, a title, captions, and a music soundtrack to your photos and videos in minutes, while Movie Maker's precision video and audio editing allows to you find the sweet spot of each video or audio clip in a snap.
- Windows Live Mail: The new Mail takes its customers' needs into account by offering productivity-focused features such as e-mail account aggregation - helping consumers manage multiple e-mail accounts, calendars, RSS feeds, contacts and newsgroups in one place. Other new features such as offline access, optional conversation threading and shared calendars help you make the best use of your time.
- Windows Live Sync: The new Sync allows consumers to sync folders across multiple PCs, and even Macs, without having to load your data repeatedly on many different platforms. Windows Live Sync keeps the folders you choose - such as documents, pictures, music, and more - in sync across your computers so you can work and play wherever you want. If you update a file on one computer, it will automatically sync to the rest when they're turned on and connected to the Internet.
