Microsoft News Tracker

Last night, Microsoft rolled out 3 new Windows Live betas as Nick White reports at Microsoft’s Windows Vista Team Blog:

Today our Windows Live team is releasing new betas for several Windows Live applications:  Windows Live Messenger 8.5, Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Writer.  All three are now available for download.

White provides many more details on what is new, but in a nutshell:

• The Windows Live Messenger 8.5 beta provides a new Vista-like user interface and integration with Windows Live OneCare Safety Center, but there was also some unspecified backend work for future features including what looks like provision for Windows Live Folders, Microsoft’s rumored online storage service.
• This is the first beta of Windows Live Mail which is the new free desktop mail client revealed earlier this month and compared to its now defunct predecessor, Windows Live Mail Desktop, there has been a switch to the same new Windows Live UI as Messenger.
• The Windows Live Writer blog authoring client had been feared to be defunct but this new beta 2 allays that concern and among a variety of fixes and feature enhancements, it too got the new Windows Live UI.

As anticipated, Microsoft today launched Windows Live Hotmail worldwide with a spiffy new AJAX interface and the intent of retiring its venerable MSN Hotmail which has over 280 million users. Some key aspects:

• A beta of a free Microsoft Office Outlook Connector will be coming later this month to allow users to handle their Hotmail in Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007.
• Some time in the “coming weeks,” Microsoft will release a beta of Windows Live Mail, a free desktop client for Hotmail. This would replace the current free Outlook Express and Windows Mail (in Vista) clients for Hotmail. Kip Kniskern interviewed Microsoft’s Paul Major, Director of Windows Live Hotmail, who says the Windows Live Mail client will be similar to, but different from the current Windows Live Mail Desktop beta which has no future. (Since Windows Live Hotmail was formerly named Windows Live Mail, it’s clear that the Microsoft marketers are still working their special magic.)
• Windows Live Hotmail is accessible on Web enabled phones or PDAs and “in the future” Windows Live for Windows Mobile, which will ship with Windows Mobile v6, will provide a full featured mobile Hotmail client.

There are more new features and aside from the nomenclature madness, this all seems worthwhile, but now begins the long transition of existing users which Major anticipates will be complete by November. I can’t help but observe that the transition would be faster if they had the Outlook Connector and the new Live Mail client ready now.

Update: Ina Fried has an interesting Hotmail background story that reveals that the new AJAX interface was deemed too slow, particularly on dial-up lines, and that was the reason that an updated “classic” interface was reintroduced to the final product at some delay.