Windows Live Mail: details about the new beta announced

By Kip Kniskern on May 7, 2007 1:12 AM

12 comments

With the news coming from Microsoft that Windows Live Mail will be succeeding Outlook Express and Windows Mail in Vista, Tanja from the Windows Live Mail team was able to post some details about the upcoming beta. Coming “in just a few short weeks”, where it will become available on http://get.live.com/betas , the new beta will be more than just a name change. According to the Windows Live Mail blog “(w)e’re bringing in features from OE, Windows Mail AND Windows Live Mail desktop” The blog entry goes on to note:

Windows Live Mail will include all the great features that were available to you in WLMd, plus:

· New and improved UI: Cleaner design, and now with Aero support!

· Setup and account migration improvements: Smoother experience overall – you will now have fewer steps in order to get started with the client.

· More parity with OE and Windows Mail: S/MIME and LDAP support are just two of the features that we’ve been working on for WLM which will bring us more parity with our other free Mail clients.

· Performance and stability: The new product will be faster and more robust than WLMd.

· No Ads: Yes, it’s true – there will be no graphical ads in the WLM beta build.

Posted in News | Tags: Mail

Comments

http://www.wave3k.net the andyman

Finally a piece of Windows Live software that supports Aero :-P – please take note Messenger team ;-)
rhann

whats the point of the plus service then?
aho

At last.. a update from the Windows Live Mail (desktop) team.

The changes look good. Cant wait to see what it will look like.
http://htp://techbuyer.spaces.live.com Custom Computers

HMNN, Thanks Kip. Going to look at links today.

I am impressed with what you found:

“· Performance and stability: The new product will be faster and more robust than WLMd.

· No Ads: Yes, it’s true – there will be no graphical ads in the WLM beta build.”

Published Monday, May 07, 2007 6:12 PM by Kip Kniskern
rb1385

Finally some exciting news from the Live team. I can’t wait to see how this looks and works.
Chris

Andy: the new Writer UI has Aero support too. more on that later ;)
http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2007/04/30/new-windows-live-writer-screenshot.aspx

Rhann: I’m also asking the same question, hopefully we’ll have another post today answering some of the common questions being asked.
http://www.lifeinvasion.com zlinko

I never did like WLM Desktop but now that I have Vista I would like to see how this is all going to work out.

Umm.. mabe they should also focus on important things like.. umm.. I don’t know.. THE CALENDAR?

Just a thought.
http://paulstorms.spaces.live.com paulstorm

here here — can’t wait for the calendar work zlinko!

I’m curious why you didn’t like WLMdesktop?

As a plus subscriber — I’m also looking forward to more plus-specific features! Even Outlook Connector is now going free (a good thing!).

That said — I dig not having ads in my Live Space. :-)
DavidK

There are still a few quirks in the full version which I was surprised they haven’t tried to iron out yet, perhaps there more smoothing over to come when they release calendar.

Given all this talk of the “end of may”, I suspect we may see calendar around that time coniciding with the Outlook Connector and WLM release.
http://www.lifeinvasion.com zlinko

Reply to: Paulstorm

I thought it was a very “bulky” program. I didn’t like how it downloaded all my emails to my HD and if I changed or deleted something in WLM Desktop it wouldn’t delete them in my WL Hotmail account online.

There just seems to be a disconnect between the two products. I expected them to work in sync. Example: I download my mail to WLM Desktop. Then I organize my mail into different folders and maybe even delete a few. I would expect that when I go online to WL Hotmail I would see those same changes so both my WLM Desktop and Hotmail would be identical, but it wouldn’t.

WLM Desktop (god try to say that 10 times fast) would only download mail just like any other client side email program.

I also didn’t like the right hand side ads, took up too much space.

I wouldn’t mind becoming a subscriber again if I just saw it was a bit more then removing ads. At the moment with all the changes it doesnt seem worth it to me.

And yes Calendar is a MUST!
http://paulstorms.spaces.live.com paulstorm

To the one and only zlinko: ;-)

I joked with some friends about that — I got through saying Windows Live Mail desktop about 4 times fast before tripping up. = ]

So what you are expecting to see if similar to an Exchange environment. Just now I tested your experience out…I logged into Hotmail…then deleted a message from desktop. It didn’t get removed from my inbox list until the next time desktop synched. (set for every 7 minutes) I did the same with my corporate exchange account…and the email was removed from my outlook web access list about 30 seconds later (after a refresh). In this case there is a constant connection taking place.

It would definitely be nice to have a similar experience with Windows Live…tho I can’t imagine the load of millions upon millions of people with active continual connections to their mail stores. :-)

So your changes should sync back up to Hotmail…just not right away and will happen during the next sync.

I hear ya on the ads. It is so nice not to have them anymore and reclaim that screen real estate! :D

I’m a big Windows Mobile user…so whatever calendar effort comes about will have to play nice with my current Exchange calendar setup for work. I hope the teams (esp if they are reading these replies) are aware that a lot of “dual users” like myself can’t wait to use Windows Live Calendar…but its gotta work with what we have today. Having both my personal & work calendars on my smartphone is somewhat of a panacea to me. hehe
CalumJR

I would definately like to see how they are going to have it support Aero and I would love a fe wnew features to play around with since WLMd last build so I don’t get bored lol.

I am just hoping that the Windows Live Messenger team take the new GUI of WLMail into account, when releasing their next Beta.

I hate inconsistent software/services and WLMessenger is the worst for this. It doesn’t even have the Windows Live Orb at the top!!!!!

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