Lets go Live

Technorati Tags: Live Writer , Live Mail , Microsoft

I've been using Windows Live Messenger for a while now, along with Live OneCare as my security software. I have to say it is pretty good stuff, amazingly Microsoft have come up with good products! Today I tried 2 more offerings. Namely Live Mail and Live Writer.

Live Mail is simply an Outlook Express replacement. I say simply but it isn't wonderfully simple. It is not bad to set up but the interface is not wonderful.

That said it is quite clean, it does work and it is fast. My one major grouch is that message rules are complicated to setup. Well not complicated just a little long winded. Also there is no calendar included which is a big problem for me (as I use the one in Outlook quite a bit).

An 8/10 for the effort would be fair. At least it beats OE into the ground :)

Live Writer on the other hand is another matter. Quite simply a stunning piece of software. I'm using it to write this blog at the moment and it's working well. Writer is a blogger program that connects to just about any blog you can imagine and lets you post to them in a WYSIWYG way. sweet.

My only annoyance with it is that it keeps putting <p> tags in every time I hit enter and a few other html annoyances. Not a huge problem but it could be cleaner.

But it has a spell checker, it has the ability to insert media (although the attempt above inserting from Screencast didn't go so well) and it has lots of features. One useful one is the ability to live preview your post as if it were published. If nothing else it might make me make a few more posts :P

So 9 or even 10 out of 10 for writer.

So a couple of highly recommended programs there - give them a go. Microsoft's Live Network seems to be working out ok!!

Itooooooons!!

Last night I downloaded the new version of Itunes (V7. whatever). Ive been using Itunes 6 for a while and I really like the way it organises and looks after my music. I also like being able to buy online relatively cheaply. Whatever the arguments against Apple and Itunes it does work and it is the best solution on the market - end of story.

Actually V6 was getting a little old - or at least the competition was meeting it. So along comes Itunes 7, and my god its pretty cool.

The flashiest addition was the new CD browse view - where you can flick through your album artwork like they were actually Cd's. It needs to be seen to understand what exactly this is but it is really really cool. There are some bugs but essentially it works good. As a sort of compliment to this you can now tell the software to download cover artwork for all your music (not just purchased ones) this does take a bit of fiddling to get right (and might mean renaming some albums) but again it essentially works.

Actually that second feature is really cool as it is a feature I have wanted for a while - and for the most part it finds them automatically.

Other new bits n bobs include movies and TV shows in the store (and sub folders for them in the software). I got all excited over this till I found out that currently only US customers can access this. I don't know if Apple plans a UK roll out but I really really hope so - I love movies and a download system as good as Itunes for my films would be brilliant (and cut down on shelf space in my room!!). As to the TV shows I was hoping to get Prison Break series one - but again no UK version.

Another neat new feature is an upgrade to the backing up tool. So now you can back your entire collection and playlists to CD/DVD(s) and restore them at a later date. You can also do incremental backups - which is really useful (I did it straight away!!).

Other than that it just looks nicer. SO well done Apple, another good Itunes release means I'll be sticking with you for the future :P

(In other news I am downloading Vista RC1 as we speak - actually it has been going on and off all day!! so some time next week you should get a review - if it doesn't destroy my PC)

Vista come vista go

So what exactly Will vista bring to us? Apart from a long beard after all the wait of course!

At inception Vista was meant to be the next big stepping stone in OS's, Microsoft's answer to its critics. And at the start the feature list proved it! Most prominently a new file structure to replace the current NFTS format. That sounded pretty useful - especially considering the features MS promised for it. Considering how going from FAT32 to NFTS format made XP an 'evolution' it was a promising start for Vista.

The best bit was we were getting an evolution in the next version of Windows! Something that has never happened before. Not only that but it was to be released soon after XP...

Then it got delayed - really delayed. You could argue for hours over whether that has been a marketting ploy to maximise sales of XP (Personally I suspect that played a part) but no one really knows. What is certain is that our amazing new OS to play with was not going to be around as soon as. Ah well we said - think of all the new features - it must take time to write them all!

Then of course news that most were being dropped or re-worked as add-on's for release after Vista (like the new directory format). So now what is Vista, as far as I can tell it is just XP with all the security patches applied (OK so totally rewritten but feature wise...) and a flashy new GUI.

And you know what my XP Corporate already looks like that thank you very much, that's what mods are for. And the mods improve all the time. So do I need Vista, no. Will I buy it. Yes because it will bring benefits in the future and will save me messing with shell upgrades to XP (plus I like to have the latest stuff. But I will be keeping my current XP on all my other PCs, Vistas will only go on my main rig.

Now when is that release date? Changed again?

(PS I'm now using Blogger Beta which is all very nice :D go google go)