So far, Windows Live has meant what’s now called Windows Live Essentials, the suite of downloadable software (Live Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker) for a while now, since the Wave 3 beta opened up in September. But the desktop downloads are only half of Windows Live, and now for the first time we’re about to get our hands on the online bits: Profile, People, Photos, Home.Live.com, and more.

Like the Essentials suite of desktop services, the online portion of Windows Live can be thought of as a suite of services.  The first thing you will notice is that through the Wave 3 header, which we’ve been showing you for some time, you are able to get to any of the Windows Live services from wherever you are in Windows Live:

Home.Live.com

Setting Home.Live.com as a home page allows you to quickly move from service to service,

  Profile

checking up on What’s new (including Flickr, Twitter messages, WordPress blog posts, iLike selections, a number of Windows Live related web activities, and many more), checking your mail,

Hotmail

and while we’re on mail, you’re now able to log in to a web version of Messenger from within Hotmail:

Web Messenger features MPOP, so you can be logged in to multiple points of presence, and while the experience isn’t quite the full Messenger experience, this could be very useful when at work or on the road and needing to conduct a quick messenger chat.

In separate posts, we’ll take a closer look at Photos and People, and talk to Windows Live General Manager Brian Hall.