Digital Home Thoughts: What's New in Windows Live Wave 4

"Following the announcement of Messenger and Hotmail Wave 4, the next step for Microsoft's Windows Live Wave 4 announcement is the new Essentials. Today the Windows Live Essentials Preview website (http://windowslive.com/essentials) briefly went online for a short while before locking out all users with a login ID and password again. Fortunately, we were able to capture some of the information from the website, and just like before, we only chose those that we think might most interest you (those marked with Star are new ones we haven't mentioned before, other ones we have conveniently linked you to our previous coverage)..."

I was initially a bit dubious when Microsoft announced that Windows 7 wasn't going to come with an email client, photo gallery software, etc. but I was all aboard with more frequent updates; they let Windows Mail on Vista languish without any significant updates. Windows Live Photo Gallery seems to be getting the lion's share of the updates, but the other apps are getting updated as well. My wish list for Windows Live Movie Maker is really short: MPEG (h.264) output. Windows Live Sync, the most overlooked program in the Live family, is getting some updates as well, but there's no mention of the most glaring problem with it today: the 20,000 file limit per library. I really hope Microsoft gets the message that the 20,000 file limit sucks for those of us trying to keep our photo libraries in sync across multiple machines. I've had to break apart my photo library into two separate folders to keep things working...