Some of you may know that CES is currently going on in Las Vegas in the states. This is a big trade show for the tech industry to show off its new toys. All the big boys are there including the likes of Microsoft, LG, Samsung, AMD and Intel. This is the place where we were first shown the CD player, the DVD, the Commodore 64, the camcorder, even the game “Pong”. So there is no doubt this is where you go talk about big things.
The headline opening talk was by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and he was showing off some of the new things MS have to offer. If you have a spare hour and a bit, the talk is here: Clicky
Obviously most of the talk was history, marketing and clapping, however some interesting stuff did come out of it.
Firstly they have now made the new version of Windows (Windows 7) available for public download. It is only the beta (test version) and it only has a limited time that you can use it but this is the next version of Windows to play with and all very early. Not that you should download it and install it on your main machine. This is beta which means if it breaks, tough. If you want to try it make sure you only put it on a machine with just data you don’t mind vanishing.
Another big thing that came out of this was the Windows Live essentials suit coming out of beta. The live suit is made up of a fair few things, the main ones being Live messenger, the gallery, e-mail client and blogger. Most of these have been in testing for some time now, but now we have the full versions.
As such, I am currently running the new version of MSN and alike. First impressions are good. All the tools i normally use (MSN Plus and APatch) work just fine. The interface is nice and clean (and looks so much better on Vista than 8.5 ever did). I might have found one little bug, but all in all, looks good.
One of the things that I wasn’t expecting with this release was the new outlook plug-in for Hotmail. Many many moons ago you could use hotmail for free in outlook express for free out of the box. It was very easy to set up and use. Then, as Hotmail really took off they made this a pay for feature. However, the lucky few who had got round to setting it up (myself not included, i missed out by a couple of days!) got to keep this feature for free. Clearly I have been far too tight to pay so i have been stuck with the webmail until now. I say until now because they have released a couple of toys. The first is a Vista mail clone for XP and Vista which works with your hotmail account without paying. That’s very nice, but what about those who use Outlook. Well, there is now a plug-in for Outlook which lets it connect and work just like an IMAP account. This means I can create rules for Hotmail!
Now I know that creating rules for Hotmail has been around since the interface change, but this time it’s different. Now, because I have full access I can set up a rule and most importantly apply it to my current Inbox, not just new messages! This is the what I have been looking for for ages!
If you want to get all of this stuff, I suggest you go here and have a little download session: http://download.live.com/
Actually, and while you are at it, why not go to http://home.live.com/ too, this is their new live services home and it has to be said, I am impressed, it has a Facebook style feed with friends details etc. Funny that, especially when they are teaming up with Facebook and others to put feed information in this feed.
It looks like they may have actually come up with a nice way to etc all your news. I am impressed.
I for one would like to remain positive about this. So no MS hating for a little while, pat them on the back, they did good. You never know, it might last too.