Pros & Cons
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- Slick interface.
- Combines several e-mail accounts into one interface.
- Simple mailbox setup.
- Picture mail saves your friends' inboxes from huge attachments.
- Contacts update automatically.
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- No Exchange server support.
Windows Live Mail (Wave 3) Specs
| Free: | Yes |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows Vista |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows XP |
| Type: | Business |
| Type: | Personal |
| Type: | Professional |
Windows 7 will be the first Microsoft OS in over a decade that doesn't include an e-mail app—no Outlook Express. Instead, if you want a free Microsoft mail client, you'll have to download Windows Live Mail. It's perhaps the most essential of the
Sign-up/Setup, Adding Accounts
Windows Live uses one downloader/installer interface for all the Live Essentials software. The under-1MB downloader software then installs whatever Essentials you've selected. Getting Live Mail takes a 64MB download in the beta form, but that includes other software, such as the Live Sign-In assistant. The installer tries to set Live Search and MSN as your browser defaults; you may want to uncheck those options. The installer also encourages you to either sign in or sign up for a Windows Live ID, but 'that's not required for using the software. If you do sign in to the Live online service, however, you can take advantage of syncing your contact list and online calendar, and you'll be able to see when contacts are signed in to Windows Live Messenger.
You add any e-mail account to Live Mail by entering your address and password into the first dialog that pops up when you start the program. If you have a Hotmail account, just logging in at the top of Live Mail brings up your inbox. Even if your e-mail provider isn't Microsoft, the software calls out to the Internet to set up your account without requiring you to enter your POP or IMAP servers, though you can choose that route if you prefer. This is even simpler than setting up accounts in Vista's Windows Mail or Mozilla's Thunderbird, both of which require you to enter your POP or IMAP mail servers for incoming mail and your SMTP server for outbound mail. For techy users, this is no big deal, but for the average home user, not having to enter server addresses eliminates a giant barrier to entry. Live Mail scores big points here.
Like Thunderbird and Mac OS's Mail, Live Mail offers spam handling. When I first connected a Gmail account, Live Mail found a junk e-mail, notified me that it had moved the e-mail to the junk mail folder, and suggested that I check the folder occasionally. The Junk top menu item makes that simple. Junk filtering is by default set to "Low—Move the most obvious Junk," but you can either turn filtering off entirely; make filtering more stringent, even limiting accepted e-mails to senders you approve; or send junk straight to deletion rather than the Junk folder. It's too early to tell how effective the spam filter is, but these are the right options to offer.—
Interface
Live Mail sports the clean new look of the latest Windows Live suite. You get several layout options. The default is to have your folders along the left, the subject lines of your e-mails in the middle, and individual mail previews either below or to the right of the message header list familiar to users of recent versions of Outlook. But every part is tweakable here. You can, for example, customize the window border colors via the paintbrush icon in the main menu. You can also move the preview pane below the message headers and choose whether to give each message one or two lines in the message list. This represents more view customization than is available in Thunderbird, which sticks with one-line message entries.
The left pane also shows bars for Calendar, Contacts, Feeds, and Newsgroups, and you can either turn these off or minimize them to icons. A Quick Views section of the folder panel lets you see only unread e-mail or feeds, and below this you see all your e-mail accounts, which you can view separately. I prefer to look at messages from one e-mail account at a time, rather than combining the inbox with unread mail from all accounts, but it's good to have the option.—
Photo E-Mail
The most common way to share photos is e-mail. Given all the great online photo galleries like
You can start a Photo e-mail directly from the new menu item, or add photos to an e-mail you've already started via the Photos button. Once you've finished selecting pictures, you can add borders to the thumbnails, choose file sizes, and even touch up the picture with autocorrect, rotate, or B&W. You have a choice of nine layouts, from small thumbnails to large images with captions. I created a test e-mail from about 3MB of photos, and the result at medium file size was an e-mail of 700K. The original photos are hosted on Microsoft servers and are available for 30 days for download or slideshow viewing. You can send up to 500 images per month and upload 500MB of images for each photo e-mail. In all, I found Photo e-mail to be a very welcome and well-executed feature.—
Contacts and Calendars
Live Mail's approach to Contacts is extremely well thought out. Double-clicking a contact's icon brings up a dialog where you can enter personal, work, notes, and even secure digital IDs for the contact. But the key item in this dialog is a check box in the bottom: "Automatically update contact info for this person." This solves the problem of moving e-mail addresses: Whenever the contact changes or adds an address, it's automatically reflected in your contact list.
If you're signed in to Live Messenger, the contact list shows icons with a brightly colored border for those who are also signed in, and you can IM by clicking their entry. Though the online Live Hotmail client can eliminate and combine duplicate contact entries, this feature isn't available in Live Mail—yet.
In the Vista version of Mail, calendars are separate from the mail box. Live Mail improves on this, with a large button at the bottom of the left folder panel that switches the main window to a view of your calendar. You can create multiple calendars, and the app supports the iCal standard so that you can import entries. But only Windows Live calendars can be synced to the Live Mail app.
As with Vista's Mail program, you can have alerts for calendar appointments sent to your Messenger IM, your e-mail, or to your mobile phone. By contrast, Thunderbird not only can't do this but includes no built-in calendar, though there are two beta plug-in options available: Lightning opens inside Thunderbird's window, and Sunbird launches an external calendar window.—
Feeds and Newsgroups
Live Mail can also serve as a very capable feed reader for RSS and Atom feeds. Your subscriptions appear in the folder pane and can include subfolders for related feeds. Unread items appear with bold headlines in the center panel, and, in the right-hand reading pane, images associated with the feed are displayed.
Though some have called
Though not a huge step above the Windows Mail that came with Vista, Windows Live Mail (Wave 3) is nevertheless an improvement. In particular, its solution to photo sharing via e-mail is a welcome addition. I also applaud Live Mail's easy setup of multiple mail accounts, including non-Microsoft ones. And I liked its ability to update your contacts' e-mail addresses automatically. You'll definitely get the most out of the program with a Live Hotmail account, with synced calendars and contacts, but it's a fine mail client for any POP or IMAP e-mail account, as well as for feeds and newsgroups.
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Final Thoughts
Windows Live Mail (Wave 3)
When Windows 7 ships, no e-mail program will tag along, but this smooth redesign of Vista's Windows Mail more than fills the bill. Its Picture e-mail feature cuts down on the size of your photo recipients' inboxes and offers slideshows, and its auto-mail updating for Windows Live ID holders saves manual contact edits. Very capable feed and newsgroup readers round out the package.