Windows Live: Internet based Windows?!

Bill Gates announced the new Microsoft Internet-based projects: Windows Live and Office Live. No, they are not the Internet version of current softwares that we know.

Gates said that Windows Live is a set of Internet-based personal services, such as e-mail, blogging and instant messaging. It will be primarily supported by advertising and be separate from the operating system itself. Office Live will come in both ad-based and subscription versions that augment the popular desktop productivity suite.

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Let’s take a look at Windows Live beta.

We can try out Windows Live beta at http://www.live.com. However, the website is ONLY viewable using Internet Explorer. Other browsers (Firefox, Opera and Safari) would only display a search form.

Update: Microsoft has updated Live.com for other browsers.

Once Live.com is loaded, you will get a left sidebar and a content column. Overall, it is clean and ads free (currently). Live.com is powered by AJAX. The content box is movable by dragging & dropping it.

In the sidebar, there are “My Web”, “Gadgets”, and “Categories”. You may add your own content into “My Web”. Under “Gadgets” are several Internet services such as webmail, stock quotes, weather, etc. There are preset site feeds in “Categories”, which give you the latest updates of your favorite topics.

My two cents

I feel that Microsoft Windows Live is very similar to Google Personalized Home. Features such as the search form that is at top of the page, AJAX, web mail, feeds fetching and so on, are in Google Personalized Home too.

I do not personalize search engines as my homepage, because they are not helpful to me. My browser’s startup page is The Hunger Site.