So it all started with one email telling me that I wouldn't be able to access my Hotmail account (or should I say Windows Live Hotmail) via Outlook Express - because the DAV protocol is crap (basically). To be honest, I was less than impressed. I hardly every visit my email account through IE7. I just use OE. Instead the email suggested I use something called Windows Live Mail.

So I went and downloaded it - note: you can't download the installation *.exe directly you have to jump through some hoops with a installer and downloaded *.exe instead (WLinstaller.exe). Which was a pain in the ass, for some reason it would take ages to scan. I eventually got it working - Microsoft work on this little app of yours, even a geek like me had to do some major troubleshooting to get this working.

So I started using WLMail Client, and to be honest I love the damn thing. It also supports newsgroups (handy if you are a Microsoft beta tester like me). My only gripe is that is seems to take a while to detect and download new emails. And by a while I mean a good 10-20secs slow than OE. This is an annoyance to me, I can see I have the email in my inbox (via WLMessenger) but the actual email hasn't appeared in the inbox of WLMail Client, it just seems to sync a lot slower. The functionality is also somewhat broken regarding newsgroups, I can't get it to download every single message from the beginning of the groups life. Other than that, I really really like what Microsoft have developed here. It also integrates with WLMessenger nicely as well (I updated that too, was running quite an old version).

So I'm pretty happy with WLMail Client and WLMessenger. And I was just sitting here thinking, "man I haven't blogged anything in ages". The reason is simple, it simple takes too long using the web interface on Windows Live Spaces. So long that it's put me off updating my blog for a while. So I decided to download Windows Live Writer (WLW). I'm actually using it right now to type out this blog and shortly, I'll be publishing via WLW aswell. I also had to download and install WLW using WLinstaller.exe (urgh, I hate that thing). My only gripe so far with WLW is that I can't have the same fancy windowed borders that I can with WLMail Client and WLMessenger. Other than that, it's pretty cool (is "cool" still "in"? :D )

All of these apps are branded under "Windows Live" there's a shit load more too. See here for a full list. To download any of the apps I talked about in this post, go here.

I'd highly recommend trying out Windows Live Mail Client and Windows Live Writer. Chances are you are already using Windows Live Messenger :P

~Singh400