Windows Essentials helps to solve the ‘shortage of apps’ issue that comes with Windows. While Windows Essentials may have abandoned its Live branding, this still an awesome starter pack that is loaded with very useful apps for a new PC. This is a big download, but that is because it comes with Photo Gallery, Live Messenger, Movie Maker, Live Mail, SkyDrive and Live Writer. The apps that received the biggest improvements in this bundle are Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. Both programs have been designed to function with Windows 8 and feature Microsoft’s easily identifiable ribbon interface.
Live Messenger went untouched and is pretty the much the same as it has been for a while. It features tabbed browsing, integration with Facebook and Linkedin, and has the ability to log your chats. Other than that, it is pretty much the same program as Live Messenger 2011. While not as electrifying, SkyDrive is still a necessary program that lets you sync to the cloud and between different machines, which has its conveniences- since you can work on the same document from different computers and still save the changes.
One of the “out of the box” issues with Windows is that it does not come with a default installed mail client. Windows Essentials fixes this setback by supplying you with Windows Live Mail. While not all of the apps will be found as useful to you as for others, there is still likely to be many that are. Windows Essentials is definitely worth the time it takes to download.
Useful apps for getting started with Windows.
