Windows Live Essential hits beta

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A comment on my blog post this week about Messenger for iPhone asked when a beta of Windows Live Essentials (aka Wave 4) would be ready. The answer is real soon….tomorrow in fact :)

Get Windows Live Essentials beta tomorrow from this link

The beta includes the new version of Messenger you may have seen with deep social integration, along with new versions of Mail, Photo Gallery and my favourite, Writer. The latter remains the best blogging tool on the planet and I remain convinced people would pay $30 or so for this application – even more on the Mac perhaps. It remains free but don’t let that put you off. If you’re a blogger and you’ve never used Writer you’re in for a treat.

Photo Gallery has got some plaudits from none other than Michael Arrington so that’s worth a look too with features like photo fuse. Mail get a very nice update with great new features and some elegant UI work to boot.

Brandon has a way more comprehensive post than me as does Piero over on the Windows Live team blog. I’ll be back to post on Live Sync soon which takes up where Live Mesh left off. It takes some getting used to but I like it.