Windows Live Services FREE STUFF from MS

Computer Help and Discussions Software
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I dont know if everyone already knows about these things or not but if you dont you should give them a look.

http://get.live.com/betas/home

I've tried most of the things listed on that page.

1. Writer- This is a surprisingly cool little piece of software. You basically get to make your blog posts in an intuitive interface rather than the crap most services offer. You then just upload it to you blog. I only played with the software for a minute because I dont blog and just wanted to try it out. If you are a blogger though, you should definitely at least try this.

2. Mail- Basically this kicks the crap out of OE but isn't going to be replacing outlook for anyone. Its not bad and its easy to set up.

3. Messenger- IM program. I haven't tried it because I very rarely use MSN and when I do, I access my account through pidgin.

4. Photo Gallery- This is kinda neat. Its probably whats already built into vista but I cant say for sure since I dont use vista. I use picasa though so I didnt really have much use for it. Maybe if you are using the standard xp viewer then you should give this a try.

5. Family safety- I haven't tried this but I guess its a internet filter for kids. Great if you have kids, but I have no use for it right now. I will still try it someday though just to try it out.

6. Skydrive- This may be useful if you need to store files on the net. I used AOL's xdrive for a bit and realized I didnt have much of a use for doing this. I would rather just carry a usb stick around.

7 Windows Desktop Search- Basically gives xp users a vista like search. I tried it and it works great!

I however am one of those people who has everything in their my documents folder all organized in folders and sub folders, so I dont need to search. I didnt used to be this way though and if I had WDS back then I probably never would have changed. Deffinitely a must have if you have a hard time remembering where you put documents.(but some people also just like searching instead of going through the menus.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/...ch/default.mspx

I know I had posed a few of these before but never about them all, so I figured why not.

These programs really can expand the features of xp and bring it just a little closer to the few cool things most people like about vista. :D

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7 Windows Desktop Search- Basically gives xp users a vista like search.

I'll try that one out because I've never liked the default search in XP.

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I'll try that one out because I've never liked the default search in XP.

Yeah its pretty piss poor.

WDS will index all your files and as soon as you start typing in the names it narrows down what your looking for. I deffinitely liked it better than google, yahoo, and copernic desktop search programs.

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How is Live Mail compared to Thunder Bird?

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I think they are probably about even feature wise as long as you dont use extensions in thunderbird. From they way they are set up I think live mail might just be a little easier to use if you have never used a client like these before. Live mail has a very "vista/wmp11/office 07" look to it and because of that everything is pretty well laid out.

One cool thing about windows live mail is that you can can also use it to check the free hotmail accounts which no other client can. Not sure if anyone actually uses hotmail anymore though.. although the newest one is pretty good.

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Windows Desktop Search turned into a binned app within 10-15 minutes of fiddling with it, plus I didn't like how many resources it was using. It did look good visually, although it couldn't find a damn thing I searched for. :lol:

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Windows Desktop Search turned into a binned app within 10-15 minutes of fiddling with it, plus I didn't like how many resources it was using. It did look good visually, although it couldn't find a damn thing I searched for. :lol:

You have to let it index your hd and it only does that when your computer is idle unless you tell it otherwise.

It doesn't eat up too much ram once its done with the index. I think it was only like 15mb of ram which is nothing. :)

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Everyone should try out the maps feature. I love the Bird's eye view, you can look at a location at a 45 degree angle, rather than just from above.

http://maps.live.com/

There is an app you can install on your computer that makes building, landscape etc. 3D

Much better than Google Maps or Earth

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Wouldn't the Windows Desktop Search be similar to Launchy, except it needs plugins to do what Launchy can do already?

*shrug*