Like any other product, I’ll start off with the install experience. Drawing on ideas from the Wave 2 installer, this one is more refined and clean, especially since component selection has been switched from web-based cookie to the install program itself. Another good thing is the prerequisites section that tells you exactly what it will install along with the products selected.

As you install, setup billboards inform you about the benefits of Windows Live. I guess it was inevitable that these would be stuck on.

Of course there’s the obligatory screen offering you to set Live as your default everything, as well as participation in the CEIP.

Naturally at this point Messenger opened automatically. The WIC component required a restart so I did that before continuing.

Messenger

Windows Live Messenger, the flagship product of the suite, had some notable changes over even the leaked M1 build.

Some consisted of minor visual tweaks: A contact’s status have been changed from the “buddy” symbol to a series of colored squares, representing a certain state. This also ties in with the outline around the display picture, although something about it seems out of place. Also, other statuses, such as “Be right back” and “Out to lunch” are gone.

The other statuses and their display picture outlines

When mousing over a contact, a toast consisting of actions pops up. Same thing goes when mousing over your own display picture.

The contact list layout options have moved into the main options window. While this is probably necessary for the amount of options that have been added, it may be inconvenient for the fact that it may take one or two extra clicks to change the view.

Instead of a simple color changer, there is now a “Change your scene” preference window that also includes colorful backgrounds that you can apply to your Contact List window, and others who message you see your theme on their conversation window. Again, this sacrifices Fitts’ Law for more customization.

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Finally, a new “What’s New” row,  shows your contacts’ latest updates a-la-Facebook News Feed.

Mail

Windows Live Mail has gone through some changes too. The UI has been simplified a bit.

Pretty much the only notable feature added is the calendar, which syncs with Windows Live Calendar and comes with predefined holidays (country dependent). I smell a Windows Calendar replacement coming.

Photo Gallery

Along with a refreshed UI, Photo Gallery sports integration with Flickr and people tagging, along with extensibility via other plugins.

People (well, anything) tagging in action

You can link your Windows Live ID through Photo Gallery to your Flickr account. (This isn’t new, it’s just now integrated into the default install of the application)

You can now filter images by exact rating or a greater than value.

Writer

The app that I used to write part of this blog post now has integration with MSN Soapbox and YouTube to directly upload or link from existing videos.

Also not new but to clean up branding is map integration. Formerly called “Windows Live Local”, it now identifies itself as “Live Search Maps” and uses the latest version of Virtual Earth.

On a strange note, after writing part of this post with Writer, uploading it to the blog, and then attempting to download the post for editing, Windows Error Reporting threw me a message. The program didn’t crash, but for some reason the post could not be retrieved from the server. Tinfoil hat wearers are in luck: Sending a report doesn’t send you the contents of what you’re working on.

Movie Maker

I was most anxious to try this, but for some reason it wouldn’t play or let me add videos to a project (possibly due to ffdshow related issues). For this reason I just took a couple of screenshots of the UI. The ribbon works almost exactly as it does in Office 2007.

Conclusion

So that’s about it for the Wave 3 products. I didn’t try out the Toolbar or Family Safety betas since those aren’t as commonly used as the other products. Overall, things are looking up for the future of Windows Live, and pretty soon we’ll see how these products (or a forthcoming version) integrate with Windows 7.