How Do You Run Windows Live?

Posted By: Sarah Perez | Feb 5th @ 12:43 AM

Mike Torres, a member of the Windows Live team, recently posted an article detailing how he uses the Windows Live suite of programs. It's an interesting read, because Mike really uses Windows Live to its fullest as well as running almost 100% Microsoft software at home. He says he wants to "eat the Microsoft dog food," and that he does - in addition to Windows Live, he also runs Media Center on Vista Ultimate, Zune, Office 2007, Visual Studio, Office Communicator, Expression Studio, and Money 2007.

Mike then goes on to detail how he uses all aspects of the Windows Live suite - Hotmail, Live Mail, Windows Live for Windows Mobile, Messenger, FolderShare, OneCare, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Writer, SkyDrive, Spaces, and Windows Live Events.

Since most of us use web services piecemeal, choosing our favorite app for the particular job at hand, it's cool to hear from someone who uses every piece of the online suite. As he says, "Windows without Live on it feels plain these days - sort of like how Xbox must feel without Xbox LIVE."

I have to admit, there are certain things in Windows Live suite that I almost think of as just a part of Windows now, like Windows Live Photo Gallery and Live Mail. When I went to set up a new Vista installation recently, I had to remind myself to go out and download them again. I personally love Windows Live Photo Gallery's "Send to flickr" feature - what a timesaver that is! I'm also a huge fan of SkyDrive, an online storage option where you have a gig of free storage for your files (of any type - not just Office docs!). And of course, I don't even know what I would do without Live Writer.

You can check out the Windows Live Suite at http://get.live.com. Or, if you're already using it, let me know what your favorite features are, too!

Tags: SkyDrive, Windows Live

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Comments (4)

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hshawjr

I would love to see an Icon for my desktop to take me directly to Live. I am starting to use it more and more, but it is tough to change your blog site and loose all of your previous links and people who have linked to you.

peterkirn

Well, yeah, speaking as a non-Microsoft person, I think it's the integration of Windows Live with non-Live services that's appealing to me. So my workflow looks like this, running multiple technology blogs (documenting personal work and writing about creative technology, in particular for createdigitalmusic.com and createdigitalmotion.com:

Windows Live Writer, tapping into multiple WordPress-powered blogs

Image upload to Flickr (and I'm hoping to work on some plug-in development so the Flickr plug-in can look at Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr, as well as integrate with storage capabilities on Amazon S3 -- thanks to WLW's extensibility)

Windows Live Gallery as my default image browser, but hooked into metadata that is shared with Adobe Lightroom for heavier-duty image processing (WLG works nicely for light jobs)

For mail, it's Windows Live Mail and Outlook integrated with IMAP on Google Mail, syncing images to FaceBook, with contact info synced to LinkedIn, and all accessible (along with Windows Live Search) on my Blackberry

So, while I'm all for dogfooding, I also hope Microsoft's awareness continues to grow about how we use the products in heterogeneous setups. Windows Live for me is a real demonstration of the potential power of that.

And, incidentally, I'll add this, too: I'm a long-time Mac user as well as PC user, and I spent some time trying similar solutions on the Mac. I think WLG / WLW easily beat anything available for blogging workflows on Mac, hands down.

peterkirn

Oh, yeah, and maybe there can be a new Microsoft word for trying everything that's out there -- which is clearly part of what the Windows Live team did?

How about tapas?

hshawjr

The one thing that I like is that there is a central dashboard for live products. If there was a way for Microsoft to modularly integrate (so I can pick and choose) the Windows/Microsoft/Liven apps into that dashboard, I would be extremely happy and would go away from Igoogle as my current start up dashboard.

I attempted to cut and paste a copy of my Igoogle dashboard, but it wouldn't let me paste it in?