Windows Live Apps Get Good Marks

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"One of the goals of the Windows Live package, which includes e-mail, messenger, blogging and photo-sharing services, is to link desktop computer software running on Microsoft's mainstay computer operating system to the "cloud" of computing available on the Internet. On another level, the goal is more basic: to compete with such services that already exist elsewhere on the Web, from the likes of Google, Yahoo and MySpace. But if you are a newcomer to Windows Live and check out the applications, either as an all-in-one download or piece by piece, you will discover one very un-Microsoft feature: They are not designed to work only with Microsoft products. Take Windows Live Mail, for instance. The e-mail program can download Web mail from Google's Gmail and from AOL, as well as Microsoft's own Hotmail. Or the new Photo Gallery: You can also upload your Windows Live-enhanced photos to Flickr, the picture-sharing Web site run by Yahoo. Windows Live Writer will publish your blog musings on platforms other than Microsoft's Spaces, and there are features that let you share material on Facebook, although, granted, Microsoft now has an interest in that one. It is welcome recognition that consumers prefer choice, that Microsoft's old approach of building fences around its systems, chaining them together and locking people inside mostly annoyed users, even if the programs all worked better together - never mind the legal questions."