Windows Live Essentials 2011 - Review, Features and System Requirements

Windows Live Essentials 2011 System Requirements

• Operating System: The Windows Live Essentials 2011 is being developed to be installed on the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 based operating system. The Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 users will also be able to utilize these products, provided that they have the Service Pack 2 and Platform Update available under their respective operating system. It can be used in both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the above mentioned operating systems.


• Processor: The Processor must be atleast of 1.6 GHz to be eligible to support the installation successfully. However, it is recommended to have a higher processor capacity to be able to experience the best performance out of it.


• Memory: The memory requirements is maintained at a minimum scale of 1GB RAM. Same as that of the processor requirements, the memory too is recommended to be of higher value for optimal performance.


• Graphic Card: The graphic card option is required for the editing tools included in the suite (e.g. Windows Live Movie Maker, Photo Gallery). It is recommended to have DirectX 9 and Shader Model 2 compatible integrated or dedicated graphics option for working with those tools properly.


• Other Requirements: There are some additional requirements meant for some specific tools that comes with the Windows Live Essentials 2011. One of them are the requirement related to Windows Live Mesh which needs OS X 10.5 in order to be compatible to run on Mac. Besides these, the Messenger tool will require the availability of a webcam attached to the computer along with microphone and headset in order to activate and make use of the chatting features available therein. It must also be noted that the HD Video Chat option may not work properly with any normal webcam and hence a compatible HD Webcam is required for availing that feature and service.

Windows Live Essentials 2011 Tools and their Features

1. Windows Live Messenger 2011: This is a great tool for remaining in touch with others as it provides the convenience to communicate with various people through its Instant Messaging Service. The IM feature provides a more advanced and top quality service to chat with friends and families, relatives and colleagues all from a single user interface while also offering face-to-face video chat with HD quality. Not only this, it also offers other good features which includes enhanced collaboration capabilities to share files, playing games with friends while chatting on the messenger, advancing video voice-mails when the recipient is offline for chat, using 3D emoticons to express your feelings and draw your friends attention and above all of these, have access to social networking sites like Facebook right from the convenience of the Messenger client. This is not an end to the list of available features within the Messenger but includes many other facilities that delivers the freedom to communicate in the way you want to where the said service can even send text messages to mobile devices using Windows Live Messenger.


2. Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011: This is another great utility tool for managing all your digital photographs and images in an attractive manner while also having fun in doing so. It lets you share your images and video contents into the online galleries and social networking sites like Flickr, Facebook, SkyDrive or Youtube directly. You can also search for different digital contents like photographs by simply posing in front of the webcam wherein the built-in face recognition system will automatically detect and display all the photos of the said person available within it. If this is not the way you want to perform the search of photos and videos in the gallery, then you can also make use of the new 'FIND' tab which can do the job of searching related files speedily and accurately. In addition to all of these, it comes with endless possibilities to edit and enhance the images and make them look great. So with all such good features available under its hood, you will certainly have the fun to play around with your images and videos and also share them with your friends and relatives or otherwise organize them for your own use.


3. Windows Live Movie Maker 2011: This is the tool that most Windows users are already aware of as it offers the features to edit multimedia contents with ease and most effectively. This tool is not only concerned with only basic editing of video files, but is also capable of enhancing the said video clips to look more attractive and profession by allowing the use of various special effects, transitions, sound, and captions to use within them. Like other tools within the suite, the Movie Maker too has the useful feature of online sharing where any of your edited movie can directly be exported to your favourite social networking sites or video hosting portals for others to view. For people with not much expertise in manipulating the various attributes of video clips while editing, there are AutoMovie themes which can be used to make the video look the same as what you wanted it to look like. So if you are interested in editing you videos and giving them a personalized look without having much expertise in doing so, then this is the right tool for you to make use of.


4. Windows Live Mesh 2011: This is a very handy utility tool which offers the backup and sync service. Using it, you can backup or sync all your documents and files with every computer that you want to use and also access them whenever and wherever you want even while being offline. This can also be used to sync files and folders with your own Skydrive account for upto 5 GB of free storage space. It gives the freedom to work remotely and access the various data from anywhere you are located. This is quite a handy tool and can turn out to be very useful to get rid of all the backup tools like flash drives which you would otherwise need to carry along everywhere you go where such stored data may be required. This service which is available for only the Vista and Windows 7 users is worth the try to keep all the documents and files in safe way and have access to them from anywhere at anytime.


5. Windows Live Writer 2011: This is one of the familiar editting tool for blogging professional and also those who are used to composing blog posts and online articles. It has the support for working with the layout of various blogging platform like WordPress or Google Blogger and thereby provides the convenience to easily and efficiently create attractive and stunning posts while being offline. It provides the feature to edit posts offline, but this is not something that highlights the importance of using it. The featured option within this tool is that you can edit and compose your blog post and preview them in the same way as it would appear when submitted online. It allows to embed photos, videos or add a Bing map into the post body easily along with other text contents. So, if you are involved with the job of blogging then this tool is one of the must-have item for you which will definitely be helpful in creating professional quality blog post and also to associate the same to post online directly from it.


6. Windows Live Family Safety 2011: The family safety tool provides a good way to monitor your kid's online activity when you do not have the time to monitor what they are busy with while being online. It is like the blacklist and whitelist filter which most of you are used to in mobile phone or you may also call it as similar to parental control in television sets. This feature which works under the Windows PC allows you to specify what programs or applications they can access or in the opposite order we can say that you can restrict particular applications, games or online websites from having access by them. Instead of blocking a complete site for accessing, the new Family Safety can rather monitor if the child is using any inappropriate site and if that is so, then the parents will be notified regarding it. So, you can easily make your way to setup the same in your Windows computer according to your requirements and have total control and peace of mind regarding your child's computing activity.


7. Windows Live Mail 2011: This is a mailing client for managing your emails in a orderly manner with lot of new features. This tool which Microsoft has labelled as 'Mail made modern' is a great way to associate all your email accounts with it and take stock of all the updates taking place in your inboxes. You can compose mails easily and also send images to your friends as photo email. All the images which needs to be delivered to the recipient's inbox need not be done separately as it can be done as a single album with lots of HD Pictures contained therein. It provides easy way to organize all of your conversations and then search them efficiently whenever it requires to be done.


8. Outlook Connector Pack: This pack is used as the Outlook Hotmail Connector and also as the Outlook Social Connector Provider. This is used to manage your hotmail account directly from the Microsoft Outlook without any cost. It can handle all the edition of Microsoft Outlook which may be stated to be that of Microsoft Outlook 2003, Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Outlook 2010. It can also be used to connect the Messenger and the Outlook for making use of the social features available in Windows Live Messenger from a central view of the Outlook Software. Thus, it provides a great way to extend the interoperability between Outlook and Messenger for the ease and benefit of the hotmail users.


9. Other Tools: Windows Live Essentials 2011 comes with a lot of other tools apart from what is listed above. There is a Bing toolbar which is meant to be integrated and installed into the web browser. It is similar to that of the Google Toolbar and provides many different features to search effectively on the Internet. It comes with breaking news button for the latest updates on the global news and informations. It also have the safe search filter for avoiding the inappropriate materials to be displayed in the search results. It is therefore useful in many ways and would be helpful for those individuals who prefers the Bing search engine. Another feature that comes with the Windows Live Essentials 2011 is the Messenger Companion which lets you know the different pages that your friends have visited while using the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser. Using it, you can also share links of pages that you found useful and which are worth to be shared among your online friends community. Finally, it comes with the Silverlight which is used in many of its user interface and provides many useful facilities. For learning the use of Silverlight, you may check a brief explanation of it in one of our previous article Silverlight 5 Features and Release Date