With the release of Windows 7, Microsoft veered from its previous policy of jam-packing its operating system with programs for emailing, photo management, movie creation, and other tasks. Instead, Win7 users can simply download any or all of these programs free as part of the Windows Live Essentials package. Although this new tack might seem like more of a hassle than a benefit, the reasoning for the switch makes good sense.

A primary benefit of downloadable programs is that Microsoft always has updated programs available for download, so when you download one of these Win7 add-ons, you’ll know you’re getting the latest version. Another benefit is that by separating the programs from Windows, Microsoft can work with partners to deliver additional content and capabilities that antitrust laws might prevent if Microsoft bundled the programs with Windows. Further, a common complaint among Windows Vista users is that the OS suffers from bloat, mostly due to the inclusion of programs such as Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Movie Maker, and many others. Although these programs prove useful for some users, not all of the programs are needed by all users. With selective add-ons, you can now choose which programs to download, and if you don’t like any of them, they’re simple to uninstall. Here’s a look at the programs available for download at down load.live.com..

Windows Live Mail

For a free email client, Windows Live Mail is tough to beat if you're seeking simplicity and just enough frills to hold your interest beyond email. As the successor to Microsoft Outlook Express and Windows Mail (which appeared in Windows Vista), Windows Live Mail includes access to Web email accounts, shared calendars, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, event reminders, and more, delivering sufficient power and flexibility to serve as a day-to-day client for casual users.

Similar to Microsoft's robust Outlook, Mail features a reading pane that lets you preview messages without opening them. The layout of this pane, along with the layout of the message list and folder pane, can be customized to your liking to accommodate messages on the side or bottom of the client. Also like Outlook, Mail includes links to common tasks on the left pane, including Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Feeds, and Newsgroups.

Regardless of how many email accounts you have and where they reside, chances are good you’ll be able to access all of them in Windows Live Mail. This client supports POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and lets you add Web mail accounts from Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, and others (you’ll need a Yahoo! Plus account to access your Yahoo! email).

Mail also features a highly usable calendar that offers Day, Week, and Month views, along with the option to create additional calendars. Adding new daily events is as simple as right-clicking a day and clicking New Event, and you can customize events to reoccur daily, weekly, monthly, or on virtually any other schedule. If you already have a Windows Live calendar set up online at calendar.live.com. you can use Mail to both access that online calendar and synchronize events across both calendars. For example, if you are offline, you can add events in your Windows Live Mail calendar. The next time you go online, Mail will add those events to your online Windows Live calendar. You can also set up calendars on Windows Live, share them with family and friends, and edit them with Windows Live Mail.

The contact directory in Mail lets you easily add contacts and organize them by category (such as Friends, Family, etc.). Like other features of the client, the directory synchronizes with your Windows Live network, so you’ll be able to easily access the online profiles of your directory contacts in Windows Live Mail.

On the security front, Mail provides an impressive set of options to tailor your email experience to your precise needs and preferences. You’ll get various levels of junk email protection, customizable safe and blocked sender lists, international email options, phishing protection, and options that help to protect against viruses and unauthorized images and external content.

Windows Live Messenger

Whether you’re looking to instant message a friend, share files, or make a phone call from your PC to a standard phone, Windows Live Messenger is a suitable one-stop communications shop. If you already use Yahoo! Messenger for your instant messaging tasks, don’t let that sway you away from trying Microsoft’s client, because Windows Live Messenger lets you communicate with users of the popular Yahoo! client.

Messenger provides the standard methods for adding contacts, but you can also log in to your Windows Live account to search for contacts on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, AOL, Google, and other sites. Messenger also lets you create categories and groups to help put your contacts in logical places. The client gets you started with a Favorites category, which places your designated favorite contacts at the top of the main Messenger window when they sign on. To add a category, enter a new category name and select all the contacts you want to exist in that category. Creating groups is similarly easy, but the difference here is that you can use these to perform group chats with up to 20 members.

Windows Live Writer

Blogging has become a daily event for many people, prompting software developers to create blog editors that let users write even when they’re offline. Microsoft has staked its own claim on the blogging program hemisphere with Windows Live Writer, a blog editor that’s packed with useful features. At first glance, Writer looks like an elegant text editor, complete with a Word-like menu system and icons that can transform text and formatting. But with a little digging, you’ll find that this tool can give you the ability to produce wildly creative (and attractive) blogs. For example, you can easily add multiple photos at once and edit them using crop and tilt commands. If you have Windows Live photo albums, you can use any of several styles to display the album, including a “scatter” option that shows previews of all the pictures as if they were all dropped onto the screen.

You can also add video clips from the Web, your computer, or even YouTube. Further, if you insert a video clip in your blog, you can opt to have it automatically published to either YouTube or Soapbox when you publish your blog. There are also plug-ins for Flickr (which uploads an image to your Flickr account and inserts an inline image in your blog post), DiggThis (which adds a DiggThis badge to your blog post after it’s published), and Twitter (which generates a URL and creates a tweet about a published blog post).

Windows Live Family Safety

The Internet is teeming with opportunities for children to learn, but it remains a risky place for kids who traverse it without guidance. Windows Live Family Safety helps parents keep a tighter rein on their children’s Internet activities through the use of unobtrusive, easy-to-use controls over specific Win7 user accounts.

You can configure Family Safety to monitor multiple accounts—for example, the accounts of each child in a household. When monitoring is in place via the Family Safety program, parents can visit the Family Safety Web site familysafety.live.com. to make changes to the default controls over an account. For example, you’ll be able to select the type of Web filtering necessary for the child (such as Basic or Strict). You can also specify Web sites to block or allow, and you can transfer that site list to other accounts or import one from another account. Family Safety also can prevent file downloads, but you’ll need to install a downloadable filter to enable that protection.

Another useful feature of Family Safety is activity reporting, which toggles on or off and displays Web activity (including Web sites and the number of times they were visited), other Internet activity (including programs other than browsers that accessed the Internet), and computer activity (such as sessions, programs used, file downloads, and games played). Parents can also use Family Safety to manage their children’s contacts by controlling who they chat or email with on Windows Live Hotmail, Messenger, and Spaces. The program even provides some flexibility for the children themselves, who can request to see a Web site or communicate with a contact that’s currently blocked. Parents will see a list of these requests on the Family Safety Web site and can choose whether to allow or deny those requests.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Digital photos enjoy an ever-increasing presence on today’s PCs, but for many users, organizing them presents a serious challenge. Win7 includes a Pictures library to help you store and manage your photos, but it’s fairly limited in its capabilities, especially if you have a large photo collection. To help matters, Microsoft has developed Windows Live Photo Gallery, a standalone program that lets you organize, edit, email, and publish photos.

Import images into Photo Gallery from either your PC or from another storage device, camera, or scanner. If you have photo galleries set up on Windows Live, you can also synchronize your online galleries with Photo Gallery so that photos uploaded to either destination also will appear at the other location. Microsoft has made the uploading process particularly simple; just select the photos you want online and click to publish.

Photo Gallery also lets you add People Tags to photos. For example, you can tag photos with Me, Coworkers, Family, Favorites, Friends, or custom tags, and when you click any of those tags on the main window, Photo Gallery will display thumbnails of every photo that contains that tag. This process works much like the people tagging function in Facebook, where you can tag multiple individuals in the same picture.

The social networking influence also appears elsewhere in Photo Gallery. Whenever a contact in your Windows Live network adds photos to his Windows Live account, the new photos will appear in your Photo Gallery, and vice versa. Sharing photos can also be accomplished through email by simply selecting a photo, choosing a photo size, and clicking a button, which will attach the photo to a new message in your default email program.

While Photo Gallery doesn’t provide the power and flexibility of a full-fledged image-editing program, it does provide enough tools to do some basic photo touch-up. For example, you can adjust the exposure and color, straighten the photo, crop, adjust detail, fix red-eye, and add various filters, such as sepia and black-and-white. Finally, Microsoft offers some downloadable Extras that can extend the functionality of Photo Gallery. These include Photosynth, which lets you stitch together photos to create an interactive 3D viewing experience that can be shared with anyone on the Web. There’s also AutoCollage, which (no surprise) combines multiple photos into a collage, and Image Composite Editor, a panoramic image stitcher that provides more fine control than the panoramic tool included with Photo Gallery.

Windows Live Movie Maker

For many, the idea of creating movies on their PCs is a daunting proposition. Programs dedicated to the creation of movies and other video content are notoriously complicated, but Microsoft has designed Windows Live Movie Maker to provide quick and easy creation of short movies that you can share with others or upload to the Web.

Movie Maker lets you create polished movies in less than a minute. Simply add videos and photos to Movie Maker, select your music, and click the AutoMovie button, which will prompt the program to blend the videos and photos with the music, effects, and transitions. Of course, you’ll also have the option to edit your clips as you see fit by adding your own effects and animations. The program places at your fingertips more than 60 transitions, 18 pan and zoom options, and 20 visual effects, along with video trim, split, and fade functions.

Movie Maker lets you easily create HD (high-definition) movies and supports several file formats, including MPEG-4 (Moving Picture Experts Group-4), QuickTime, and AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec HD). You can post videos to YouTube directly from the main program window, and there’s also a plug-in that enables publishing to Facebook. If you want to burn your video to a DVD or save it as an HD file to play on your television, you’ll find those options in Movie Maker, as well.

Additional Programs

In addition to the aforementioned big hitters of the Win7 add-on family, Microsoft has even more programs available for download. These include the Windows Live Toolbar (for quick access to Windows Live and Bing), Microsoft Office Outlook Connector (for access to Hotmail and contacts from within Outlook), and Office Live Add-in (for accessing and sharing files within Office Live Workspace from your Desktop).

Regardless of which Win7 add-ons you decide to try, you’ll always have the option of uninstalling any of those individual programs through the Programs And Features control panel. As with any other programs, we recommend installing only one program at a time before installing another to help identify potential conflicts between programs. However, in our testing, all of the Windows Live programs worked together with no problems