Windows Live™ Mail Desktop Beta Registration and Download

Windows Live™ Mail Desktop Beta Build 8.0.0924

I've been submitting registration applications for a long time, but they were never approved. Now, finally, I can try it out. Overall impression in two words: pretty good.

At first, I thought it would be like Live Space, an upgraded version of Hotmail. Instead, they came up with a desktop client that became the replacement for Outlook.

The new Live Mail Desktop includes all the features of Outlook and integrates with Live MSN. The most obvious example is when managing contacts, you can preview the other person's Live MSN information, including their avatar and Live Space updates.

Live Mail Desktop provides special functionality for RSS subscriptions to MSN Spaces, and you can also add any other RSS feeds. However, to use this RSS reader function, you must upgrade to IE 7.0 because the core of reading subscribed RSS feeds still relies on IE7.

As before, all live products recently launched by Microsoft are interconnected. But since they're still in beta, Live Mail Desktop needs significant improvements. One feature I personally think requires improvement is the calendar system. The current calendar is not a local tool; it links to the MSN Calendar website and uses an external browser, which is quite inconvenient.