Microsoft launches new Windows Live Home beta

Yet another bolt out the blue (maybe not), Microsoft just launched the new Windows Live Home beta portal. At the moment it offers only basic functionality, ie no integration, just access to all the Windows Live services. Funnily enough, it also links to the new Windows Live Suite, though the page isn’t up yet. Oh dear.

(Click to enlarge screenshot)

<IMG src="http://www.liveside.net/Images/screenshots/Wave%202/Home/homeweather.png" mce_keep="true"

 

Your existing Live.com personalised page is still available. Check out the new Windows Live Home at http://home.live.com/

Comments

  • jackiboi

    it’s looking a bit bleak at the moment

  • vipwoody

    It has a good design, but the features and stuff in it are useless.

  • DN2004

    Nice :)

  • Chris

    Yup the features are somewhat lacking at the moment. Think of the first Skydrive version and how far they’ve come now, there is always hope :)

  • Rusticated

    I love how the colour changes according to the time of day. Hopefully in the future we’ll get a full choice of colours though.

    I hope we will eventually get the full functionality and superior design seen in the slides from the Japanese press briefing. That looks very, very nice!

    They need to make it a bit clearer that the Home is a beta. It’s accessible from the Live Spaces toolbar, so anyone could stumble across it and presume it’s finished, when really it’s hopefully only just beginning.

  • andrewshaffer

    I love the design, i wish they would implement it with Live.com so you can still have your personalized content…

  • Alex

    What happened to the personalization? I hope that feature will return because this sucks. I only use Messenger and Live.com, no other Windows Live-products because I don’t need them…

  • thaman04

    love the interface.. but it’s still not as good as the previous screenshot.. so i guess there’s a lot more to come.

    i also agree this shud be the new live.com

    i love how loads quickly too. :D

  • yanverm

    It looks great, but as mentioned by some of you:
    - missing the personalisation
    - it seems id that the header will be used for a commercial banner (let’s hope that’s not the case for hotmail plus members ;-)
    - At this moment I can not change the city / temperature. At that place I see: “Hallo” :-)
    - I don’t see the windows live mobile button on the right

    I think microsoft is testing things out at the moment, in different countries & languagues, and once the bugs are out, they will upgrade with personalisation etc.

  • Hb8

    Now THIS is what should be on the Windows Live Today pop on Messenger! Wonder if they’ll add the personalisation features of the old live.com style pages?

  • KingyOwl

    Looks promising.

    So far I can’t get the Weather gadget to remember my city.

    This is what the original live.com home page should have been because the design on that is too bland to use currently, hopefully they will merge the two, possibly with personal feeds on different tabbed pages, like in the current live.com setup and this new home page as the first tab.

  • CalumJR

    I’m liking it and also liking how the colour changes to the time of day (I hope theyinclude this on other Live services in the future, if it would work well).

    I’m gonna bet they will include the personalisation and ability to have feeds, gadgets and pages on the final release – if they don’t this would be WL’s downfall!

    The one change I would like to see is for small icons to be placed next to the links for each service in the blue WL bar (just like in the screenshot a few days ago) and the Orb drop down list – they should then also include this on all services.

    But yeah overall I’m liking this, can’t wait for the release and am looking forward to seeing what the Hotmail Wave 2 UI is like!!