Reasons to hate Windows Live Essentials 2011

Even though it has only just been officially and finally released, there are still a few reasons to hate this next wave release.

To read more about the final release of Windows Live Essentials 2011, visit the ZDNet iGeneration blog.

There is a lot to take in from the word go. You have social updates, highlights, recent events, things about you, not to mention the dwarfed contact list on the right hand side. Surely this as an instant messenger, it should at least highlight the fact it is one? With advertisements and notifications every few seconds, your eyes will jump about the page making you exhausted within seconds.

To read more about the final release of Windows Live Essentials 2011, visit the ZDNet iGeneration blog.

Because you can connect to multiple networks and not just the MSN/Windows Live service, you will find that you get a large number of notifications in a short space of time. If you connect Facebook chat for example, people dip in and out all the time - and if they have patchy connections, you could see them signing into chat a dozen times a minute.

To read more about the final release of Windows Live Essentials 2011, visit the ZDNet iGeneration blog.

You can't deny the fact that any company will try and pawn off its other products onto you, even from within a product of theirs. Messenger is no different, in that of course you can add videos, webpages and your own links into your status updates, but YouTube would be a better get than videos from Bing. If you are out to create an open social messenger application, make it open and don't "do a North Korea" and pretend the world outside isn't there.

To read more about the final release of Windows Live Essentials 2011, visit the ZDNet iGeneration blog.

Many of the Generation Y grew up with what was then MSN Messenger, the rebellious instant messaging application that you could gossip with your friends after school online. The emoticons became an iconic symbol of our youth. That is, before Microsoft came in and ripped them out, shot them in the back of the head and replaced them with psudeo-psychotic images which now make little sense.

To read more about the final release of Windows Live Essentials 2011, visit the ZDNet iGeneration blog.

There is still no Exchange support for Windows Live Mail users. Granted, it still has IMAP and POP (who still uses POP?!) but without Exchange, you cannot sync anything to and from your server - such as calendars or tasks, which is funny seeing as this new version has a semi-useless calendar function.

To read more about the final release of Windows Live Essentials 2011, visit the ZDNet iGeneration blog.

Microsoft's efforts to try and turn the entire world 64-bit is clearly failing, with no 64-bit version of the new 2011 Essentials software. Of course you can still download, install and use it as a 32-bit program, but what's the point in running a 64-bit operating system if you're just going to plug it full of 32-bit stuff? Maybe the consumer isn't quite there yet in terms of the technology, but it would be nice to have something on offer at very least.

To read more about the final release of Windows Live Essentials 2011, visit the ZDNet iGeneration blog.