In the past, Microsoft has bundled quite a bit of software with Windows to give users the best experience. With Windows 7 however, the company changed tact and moved some useful but non-essential software into a downloadable package called Windows Live Essentials.

What’s In Windows Live Essentials?

As of the 2011 update, Windows Live Essentials contains 11 different pieces of software. Most are utilities that serve important, but not absolutely critical, functions. Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Live Mesh, Mail and Family Safety are examples of this.

Bing Bar, the Outlook Connector Pack and Microsoft Silverlight are also a part of the download. These pieces of software are not utilities on their own, but instead work alongside other Microsoft software, namely Internet Explorer (in the case of Bing Bar and Silverlight) and Outlook.

Windows Vista users may be looking at this list and thinking “Hey, but I had that on my computer by default!” That’s true. Many of these tools, most notably Windows Live Movie Maker and Mail, were included with Vista by default. They were subsequently removed from Windows 7, so you won’t have those software utilities unless you install those using Windows Live Essentials.

What Isn’t In Windows Live Essentials?

Not all of the basic software that comes with Windows was removed in Windows 7. You’ll still have access to classic tools like Paint, WordPad, and Sticky Notes. These are not a part of the Windows Live Essentials package and come on all Windows 7 systems by default.

Also not part of the package is Microsoft Office, including Microsoft Office Web Apps, which is free for anyone to use. It seems like it could be a part of the package, but since everything runs in your browser, there’s really nothing to install. The same goes for SkyDrive, which in my opinion really could use a native app with features similar to DropBox, but that’s not currently part of the service.

Customizing Windows Live Essentials

A decade ago, the introduction of a software pack from Microsoft wouldn’t be available for download. It’d just be there, in your face, and difficult to uninstall. I have to give Microsoft credit – they’ve learned from the days when they were branded an “evil empire”. Microsoft Windows Live Essentials is extremely easy to customize.

When you download the installer, you’re actually downloading a small package that gives you the option to choose what you’d like to install when you launch it. You’re able to select as much or as little as you’d like. Once you’ve made the choice, the installer downloads only what you’ve picked.

Removing software is also easy. Although you can uninstall one-by-one, the easier approach is to open Windows Live Essentials in the Programs and Features section of the Control Panel. You’ll be given the option to remove specific pieces of software, or everything that’s included in the bundle.

Conclusion

Windows Live Essentials is well named. Most users will find at least one of the programs that make up the Essentials bundle important, be it Messenger (used by my grandmother), Windows Live Movie Maker (used by myself) or Photo Gallery (used by several friends). The ease with which the software can be customized, leaving behind what’s not wanted, is a step in the right direction for Microsoft. Maybe the company will one day make it just as easy to customize other parts of the operating system.

Let us know in the comments what you like or dislike about Live Essentials.  Is there a piece of Windows software currently missing which should be included in the package?

For years, MSN Messenger was a well known and popular chat program a lot of folks used. With the advent of GTalk, Yahoo IM, Meebo, Digsby, Trillian, and so many other chat programs, MSN really started falling by the wayside. In order to rebrand the IM app (along with grouping other social network services under the one umbrella), the app was renamed “Windows Live Messenger” and packaged along with other Windows Live apps.

Last year Jack did an awesome job covering a number of the best features Windows Live Messenger has to offer. In this article, I’d like to cover some some additional features, and ways you can use Live Messenger to quickly transfer photos and other files to your friend’s computer.

Integrating Windows Messenger With Everything

One of the most annoying things about most of the older, original IM applications like Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger is the fact that they are so isolated from other social networks where your friends hang out. This is gradually changing as these older IM apps have to compete with newer IM systems like Meebo or Yoomo that integrate multiple IM accounts into one client.

On Windows Messenger, you can now import contacts from your external social networks by clicking on the “Add Contact” icon and selecting “Add people from other services…”

You can import contacts from all of your top social networks and email systems like Facebook, LinkedIn, Outlook, AOL Mail and even your Gmail account.

MSN Messenger will sort through the email addresses of your contacts and try to determine whether or not these people are already in the Windows Live system. You can select which people you want to connect with inside Windows Live Messenger, and the system will send a mass invite out to those friends.

Sending Files & Photos On MSN Messenger

Once you open up a chat with one of your online contacts, at any point during the chat, you can send over a file by clicking on “Files” and “Send a file or photo…”

The file appears embedded right inside the chat itself. If it’s a photo you’re sending, Windows Messenger will now actually display a thumbnail image of the photo. A request is sent to your friend to accept the file transfer. Once they accept, you’ll see the status bar showing the transfer taking place.

As you can see, sending and receiving files in Live Messenger is pretty straightforward. However there are a few things you should set up before you start receiving files from friends. Click on Tools, Options, File Transfer to access the file transfer properties.

Here you can set up how incoming files you receive from friends are automatically handled. You can save incoming files to a specific folder, enable automatic anti-virus scanning of those files using whatever software you prefer (or install Windows Live OneCare).

Windows Live For Mobile

If you want to send and receive files and photos from your mobile device, you can enable Windows Live for Mobile on your account by clicking on “Phone” and the “Mobile Settings” button.

Once you’ve set up Windows Live for Mobile, you can automatically share pictures that you take on your phone, and you can access the whole range of mobile apps now available on Windows Live Mobile.

Additional Features Available On Live Messenger

There are also a whole range of cool things you can do with Live Messenger – some have been part of the software for a while and others are somewhat new.

If you read my article on the MSN Gaming Zone, then you will know that Microsoft is trying to compete in the online gaming industry. One way it is doing that is by integrating online games into the Live Messenger. All you have to do is click “Games” at the top of the chat window and available games you can play with your chat partner will appear on the left.

Another useful feature that Jack mentioned in his article is the Request Remote Assistance feature. Although I do have to report that when I tested this feature with our writer Dave, we found that the remote access component is flaky at best. It actually sent both of us offline and didn’t work. So, this feature may or may not work for you – but it seems Microsoft has a bit more work to do to get this working for everyone.

Another little feature you might not have realized exists in Live Messenger is the little “record” icon at the bottom of the chat next to the emoticons. You can quickly record yourself and send the clip over the chat session to your friend. This is useful for when you’re not really interested in an audio chat, but you did want to send a clip of yourself doing something like singing.

Whether or not you like Microsoft, it seems that Windows Live Messenger, formerly MSN Messenger, will probably be around for a long time. It does seem that Microsoft is continually improving on the IM software by adding some additional, pretty cool features like those listed above. However, whether it will be able to fully compete in the future with all of the new, jazzy IM clients coming out remains to be seen.

Do you find these features useful? What other things do you think Microsoft should do to improve their IM client? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

It’s clearly been a popular move, as they mention over on their blog, over 2.5 million more people have connected their Facebook accounts to their Windows Live accounts since the update.

If you want to take advantage of this feature, connecting your Facebook account is a simple process, and by so doing you’ll be able to chat with friends from Facebook, see their status updates and share your Windows Live status messages and updates with your Facebook friends. You will also be able to publish photos to Facebook and tag your friends using the Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Of course by so doing, you are granting Windows Live access to the basic information in your Facebook profile including your name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information you’ve shared with everyone, as well as your profile information, photos and videos, and even access your friends’ information, including birthdays, current cities, work history, websites, photos and videos of them.

If, in the future, you want to revoke permission, you can do so by going to services, under which your connected services are listed.

After you’ve connected your accounts, you may need to sign out and sign back in for it to take effect. Once it does, your Facebook friends will appear on your homepage and your Facebook contacts will be listed separately under your contacts, and you can begin to chat with your Facebook friends from your Hotmail account.

Are you going to connect your Windows Live and Facebook accounts? What do you think of this latest update? Let us know in the comments.

Windows Live Mail 2011 is part of the Windows Live Essentials pack, which includes everything from Microsoft Silverlight on down to Windows Live Messenger. It helps you organize your mail, calendar, and contacts all in one place on your PC. In this article, I’m going to review the application and show you some of its newest features.

Summary

Microsoft’s latest release of Live Mail comes loaded with a lot of useful features. Since Hotmail is still one of the biggest email providers on the Internet (can you believe it? I couldn’t), the need to be able to access your email anywhere – even when offline – is very important to users.

Windows Live Mail 2011 gives you that ability. All the features you would normally have on Hotmail are present within the application, allowing you to view, manage, and send emails without having to re-learn anything.

The overall layout is very similar to Microsoft Outlook 2010, except there are a few different options and customizations. A list of your emails and folders are on the far left, your viewed messages are in the middle, and a calendar with all your important dates is on the right.

Features Of Windows Live Mail 2011

Windows Live Mail 2011 helps you organize your mail, calendar, and contacts all in one place on your PC. You can use it to check multiple email accounts, like Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail Plus, and even see all of your stuff (emails, calendars, contacts) when you don’t have an Internet connection.

The app makes it easier to find what you’re looking for by allowing you to group conversations together. Upcoming events appear next to your inbox, and you can quickly add things to your calendar right from your inbox. Windows Live Mail also comes with a built-in search feature to help you find important messages by title, sender, or contents of a message.

WLM 2011 has a ribbon interface, and by that I mean the top of it looks like Microsoft Office. The ribbon has a lot of options on it, probably more than you’ll even need. Basic functions like compose, forward, and move are all there, as well as options for layout, folder management and accounts.

WLM 2011 syncs with your Windows Live ID account, so setup is very easy. It also includes a handy picture viewer right inside your emails. The picture viewer can actually be synced with SkyDrive, which will allow you to send/receive up to 10GB (25MB per email) of high-quality photos. SkyDrive also interacts with attachments by launching a slideshow preview.

Lastly, the inbox supports threaded messages for better organization. This is available in a collapsible tree-view list that will work even if your email provider doesn’t support threaded emails. WLM 2011 will automatically merge all of your similar emails together for you.

Conclusion

If you missed it, you can download the email client here. It basically does everything Microsoft Outlook does, for free. Sure, it’s missing a few things that Outlook has, like tasks and a full-blown calendar, but it’s definitely worth the download. It’s a strange choice by Microsoft but perhaps this is the road they’re headed down with their mail client.

I’m curious to hear what you think about Windows Live Mail 2011. Will you be downloading and giving it a try?

Imagine heading down to your local coffee shop to edit some photos only to find, when you arrive, that you forgot them on your USB drive! Such a scenario has happened to me a few times, and it is more than a little annoying.

There is however a solution – Windows Sync. This program makes it possible to sync files and folders between computers through an Internet connection. Microsoft Sync literally syncs all files in a folder, no matter what kind of files they are. And get this – Microsoft Sync works for both the PC and Mac.

Installation & Settings

To begin you’ll need to download the Microsoft Sync tool on the two (or more) computers you wish to sync up. Microsoft Sync is part of Microsoft’s Windows Live platform, so you will need to have a Live login in order to use the program. If you don’t have a login yet, you will have to register.

Once you have downloaded and installed the Windows Sync program you will notice that a new icon has appeared in your task tray. The icon looks like two blue arrows pointing in opposite directions. This indicates that Sync is running. The interface which you will use with Sync in order to share files and folders is actually web based, but before we go to the Sync website we need to change a setting that will make it possible to sync files and folders. Go to More –> Settings.

Your login information should already be inputted from the installation process, but if you don’t see it, or it looks wrong, go ahead and change it now. Also, click the checkbox next to “Allow remote access to my computer.” This setting must be turned on in order to properly sync files and folders.

Let’s Sync It Up

Now that the proper settings are enabled, we can go ahead and sync up our files and folders. This is performed using the web interface, so go ahead and launch the Windows Sync website. You can do this by clicking on the Windows Sync icon and then clicking Website on the drop-down menu.

When you open the web interface you’ll have two options. One is to create a Personal Folder and the other is to create a Shared Folder. The Shared Folder option lets you create folders that can be shared with other Windows Live users. It is a handy way to share information, but it is also outside the scope of this tutorial. We’re just going to be focusing on the Personal Folders, so go ahead and click Create a Personal Folder.

The next screen will ask you which computer you’d like to create the folder on. This doesn’t really matter. You are going to be creating sync folders on both your computers during this process and all files in all of the folders on all computers will be transferred. I suggest simply selecting the computer you’re currently using.

The next screen will display an Explorer view of the computer you selected. You need to select the folder in which the contents you want to sync are contained or will be contained. For example, you might make a folder in My Documents and call it My Sync Folder.  When you have accessed the folder you want, click Sync Folder Here.

Note that you need to be in the folder you want to sync. If you wanted to sync My Sync Folder you would have to click the Sync Folder Here option after you have opened My Sync Folder. If you click the option while you are in your My Documents folder your entire My Documents will be synced.

Syncing With Other Computers

You will now see a menu which is labeled “Sync with Another Computer.” The computer on which you already selected a folder to sync will be grayed out. From the list of other machines select the machine you want to sync with.

This will bring up another Explorer view, and again you will need to select a folder. Obviously, it would be best if both the folders on both computers have the same name. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. If you want to sync two folders with entirely different names, you can.

The next screen will ask if you want to use Automatic Sync or On-Demand Sync. Automatic Sync will always sync files, while On-Demand Sync will only sync files when you request them. I suggest choosing Automatic Sync, as it eliminates an extra step. Then click Finish.

Your folders will now begin to sync. You can see this activity by clicking on the Windows Sync icon and then clicking Activity from the drop-down menu. This will open a window which shows the files which are currently being transferred and their status. You will also now the sync folder you created in the drop-down menu. You can access the local version of the folder by clicking on it in the drop-down menu.

Always Have Your Files On Hand

Once you’ve set up your Automatic Sync folder between two computers you don’t have much else that you need to do. Files which are placed into the folder on either machine will be automatically transferred to the other machine. Of course, both computers do need to be online for this to happen, and both also need to be running Windows Sync. Those requirements aside, the process is completely hands-free once you set it up.

In the past, we have extensively covered the topic of synchronization.   Check them out!

SkyDrive could possibly even be a Dropbox alternative so you can sync files to SkyDrive. You can actually save yourself the work with either of the free Gladinet and SDExplorer tools, but this is another way to map SkyDrive using the downloadable Microsoft Office 2010 Beta or one open-source utility.

The 50MB file size limit still applies but most personal files and documents that you own don’t exceed that size, correct? However, if you have huge files, you might want to consider other storage services.

So in order for you to see SkyDrive in Windows Explorer, you need to retrieve the unique location of each of your SkyDrive folders or Windows Live Photo albums which is generally something like https://abcdef.docs.live.net/yourcid/nameoffolder.

In that address, abcdef is actually a unique combination of six letters and numbers corresponding to your folder or album, while yourcid is the long ID code that appears in your URL bar after you log into SkyDrive. Nameoffolder corresponds to the name of your SkyDrive folder, of course.

So let’s go over how we can figure out the abcdef codes.

Retrieving The WebDAV Addresses Of Your SkyDrive Folders (Method 1)

This method is for users who already have downloaded Microsoft Office 2010 Beta; otherwise, jump to Method 2.

1. Sign into SkyDrive.live.com in your web browser.
2. Go to the Start menu, right-click on My Computer, and select Map Network Drive.
3. Now open Microsoft Office 2010 Beta (either Word or Excel). At the top left of your document/spreadsheet, click on File > Share >Save to SkyDrive.



4. Now sign in to see your SkyDrive folders. Choose one of your folders and hit Save As.



5. In the Save As box that appears, click on the address bar to copy the address.



6. Now switch to the Map Network Drive dialog box that you opened in the first step, and paste the address in the Folder text box. After this, jump to the Accessing SkyDrive Folders From Windows Explorer section.

Retrieving The WebDAV Addresses Of Your SkyDrive Folders (Method 2)

This is for users who don’t have Microsoft Office 2010 Beta.

1. Sign into SkyDrive.live.com in your web browser.
2. Go to the Start menu and right-click on My Computer. Select Map Network Drive.
3. Now, download the open-source utility, SkyDrive Simple Viewer, (requires Microsoft.NET 3.5 SP1) kindly offered in a 14KB zip file by a developer that discovered that files could be uploaded to SkyDrive via WebDAV. Download it here.
4. Unzip the files and double-click on the SkyDriveSimpleViewer.exe.
5. Enter your Windows Live ID username (e.g. name@live.com) and password. Click on Login to my SkyDrive.



6. Choose a folder and click on the WebDAV address to copy it.
7. Switch back to the Map Network Drive dialog box that appeared after you completed step 1 and paste the address you just copied in the box titled Folder.

Accessing SkyDrive Folders From Windows Explorer

Now that you have pasted the address into the Folder text box in the Map Network Drive dialog box, delete the “https:” part of the address and change all the forward slashes (“/”) to backslashes (“\”). Your address should now look like this : \\abcdef.docs.live.net\yourcid\nameoffolder.

If you’re satisfied with the default drive letter (usually Y:) for your SkyDrive folder, check Reconnect at logon and click on Finish. Otherwise, choose another letter drive before you hit Finish. In a few moments, you should be greeted these:

Now, just sign in with your Windows Live ID (whole email) and password and you should see your SkyDrive folder as if it were another folder in Windows Explorer.

If you want to map your other SkyDrive folders, repeat the steps, making sure you copy the right and unique abcdef code of each of your SkyDrive folders. Also, when you type in nameoffolder, beware that ^2Public and ^2Documents may work instead of Public and Documents, so try those names if you have problems connecting. Names of photo albums should work the same as long as they don’t have any spaces or special characters in their names.

If you still can’t connect, try saving your file to a different SkyDrive folder in Microsoft Office 2010 Beta (if you used Method 1), copying that address instead and repeating the previous steps. If you used Method 2, try copying the WebDAV address of another SkyDrive folder in the SkyDrive Simple Viewer and repeating the previous steps.

Alternatively, try adding @SSL\DavWWWRoot\ to the pasted addresses in the Map Network Drive dialog box (e.g. \\abcdef.docs.live.net@SSL\DavWWWRoot\yourcid\nameoffolder).

Uploading Files To Your SkyDrive Folders

Now that you have your SkyDrive folders mapped in Windows Explorer, you’ll notice that it can be a little slow to even open the newly mapped folder. That’s because Windows Explorer is downloading files and folders to your location. Dragging and dropping files through Windows Explorer to your SkyDrive folders may also take a while or even choke Windows Explorer into showing you “(Not Responding)” since Windows Explorer is actually uploading each file to SkyDrive.

So if you have tried moving folders and Windows Explorer gets stuck, try copying files through the command prompt. Let’s say that you mapped your SkyDrive Documents folder in Windows Explorer using the drive letter T, and you want to copy the contents of your Documents folder in your PC to the SkyDrive Documents folder.

• Copy the path of your non-SkyDrive Documents folder.



• Press the Windows key and R at the same time to bring up the Run command.
• Type cmd and in the command prompt that appears, type “cd “ (command to change directories) without the quotes. Don’t forget the space after cd.
• Right-click on the title bar of the command prompt, select Edit > Paste. Press Enter.



• Now that you are in the directory whose contents you want to copy, type “copy *.* T:\” without the quotes. This just says to copy everything inside this directory to “T:\”.
• Wait till the command prompt shows you X file(s) copied.

After you have uploaded files to SkyDrive, map your SkyDrive folders in your other PCs and you’ll be able to sync files! Of course, you’ll see most changes reflected online at skydrive.live.com in seconds (deleting photos in Windows Explorer doesn’t seem to work because you can still see them on the website).

At the website, you can also download your files and share folders. Just upload them to your Public SkyDrive folder or edit the permissions for any other folder so that either a few people or the entire world can view your files. This is great if you want to share photos with family and friends because they don’t even need to sign in with a Windows Live ID. Just check Don’t require recipients to sign in with Windows Live ID when you’re on the Send a link page.

Right-Click On A File To Send To SkyDrive

In Windows Vista, the drive you mapped for a SkyDrive folder appears on the Send To menu after you right-click on a file, but if you don’t see it, press the Windows key and R at the same time to summon the Run command. Type in shell:sendto and in the box that appears, right-click on the white space > New > Shortcut.

Now click on the Browse… button to find the drive to which you mapped your SkyDrive folder. In my case, I chose T: for my SkyDrive Documents folder. Click OK.

Click Next. Name it something like SkyDrive Documents.

And there you go, right-click on any file and send to your SkyDrive Documents folder right in Windows Explorer!

Do you use Windows Live SkyDrive? If not, which storage services do you use?

Although Microsoft isn’t a company that people would usually associate with freeware, there are a surprisingly robust selection of free Microsoft products. The following list covers the cream of the crop products that truly stand out among their free and paid counterparts. This is part two to Mahendra’s part one  on free Microsoft products, which you can read here.

1. Microsoft Security Essentials

I work for a technology center that routinely diagnoses and removes viruses from its customers’ computers. While we use a hoard of different antivirus and malware scanners to eradicate viruses, none has been as surprisingly effective as Microsoft Security Essentials. One particular day in our office, Microsoft Security Essentials picked up sixteen entries that neither Panda Activescan nor AVG antivirus had found. In fact, it was so popular in our office that it became the default antivirus that we install on reformatted computers before they go back to their clients.

2. Bing Maps

Bing Maps is Microsoft’s version of the popular Google Maps. While the latter remains an integral part of many people’s lives, Bing Maps is an alternative that is, perhaps even more efficient. The first great thing about Bing Maps is that the front page of the website features both a To and From box. I typed in two places of interest (just to test how well Bing Maps was able to pin down their addresses) and surprisingly, Bing Maps loaded both these places immediately, and accurately. On the other hand, when I tried the same search on Google Maps, not only did the search take longer, but the addresses that Google picked were wrong!

Some additional features of Bing Maps that may prove useful are: the option to pick a route by the least amount of traffic, and the ability to send your directions to either an email, a mobile phone, or to your GPS. While I wasn’t able to test whether I could actually put my directions into a GPS system, seeing as I don’t own one, just the fact that this option exists makes Bing a viable alternative to Google Maps in my mind.

3. Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a free Microsoft product that can definitely give Picasa a run for its money. Although I prefer Picasa’s interface and organization a bit more, Windows Live Photo Gallery has the same basic features like cropping, people tagging, and simple editing. WL Photo Gallery’s exposure and color adjusting features are a bit more comprehensive than that of Picasa, but it lacks Picasa’s host of filters. As far as plug-ins go, WL Photo Gallery supports much of the same functionality that Picasa does, such as Facebook, youTube, and Flickr upload.

The main reason I love WL Photo Gallery is for its Facebook Upload plug-in. Whereas Picasa’s Facebook plug-in simply puts your photos and the associated captions in an album, WL Photo Gallery uploads your tags as well, which means that you can kill two birds with one stone! Upon upload, WL Photo Gallery pulls out the names you’ve tagged your pictures with, and compares them to the names of your friends, and automatically uploads these tags to Facebook.

For those names that WL Photo Gallery can’t match up, it lets you select the friend that goes with each tag. In the end, if you like having your pictures on your computer tagged, you won’t have to redo all of your hard work when you have to upload your pictures.

4. Process Explorer

To put it simply, Process Monitor is a bit like Task Monitor on steroids. If you ever feel the need to know exactly what is running on your computer, down to the last thread, then Process Monitor is your program. You can trace each program down to the individual processes and files that the program is using. You can also monitor your CPU usage, as well as the CPU usage history. Process Monitor tracks every last minute detail about the memory usage and running operations on your computer, so if you ever feel like learning a bit more about how the programs on your computer works, consider trying Process Explorer.

5. Paint.NET

Although Paint.NET isn’t technically a Microsoft program, it was originally mentored by Microsoft, and intended to replace Microsoft Paint. Now, Paint.NET is still maintained by some of the alumni, and has flourished into a commendable program that rivals Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. It was designed with speed in mind, so users tired of Photoshop’s laggy rendering and slow startup, or looking for a image editor for their netbook, may find Paint.NET the alternative they have been looking for. Like for Photoshop, Paint.NET also has an extensive list of plug-ins available to further add on to its capabilities.

Although many people seem to think that Microsoft only develops paid products, it is quite the contrary. There is a hoard of free Microsoft products for the public that not only bolster Windows’s features, but also act as viable competitors to many popular programs such as Picasa and Google Maps. Now that we’ve introduced you to a few of these products, try them out, and let us know how they compare!

However, it would be foolhardy to abandon our objectivity and criticize all Microsoft products. Not only does Microsoft make some great products, but several of them are available for you to use completely free.

Here are my picks for the Top 5 free Microsoft software products and why they are the best.

#1: Windows Live Writer

Any blogger not using Windows Live Writer (WLW) is wasting time and being unproductive. Looking for a better alternative? There is none.

WLW makes blogging a breeze on popular platforms like WordPress, Blogger, Windows Live, LiveJournal and Typepad. True WYSIWYG editing shows you previews of how your post will look. Easily upload/embed photos/videos with borders, effects, alignment, and resizing. WLW also has an extensible framework of plugins, that let you customize and extend its functionality. Check out our previous coverage of WLW to get more out of this must-have tool for bloggers.

#2: Photosynth

Microsoft Photosynth is a jaw-dropping technology that automatically stitches together your photos to create an immersive 3D view. You can explore hundreds of thousands of synths on the site, or upload your own photos to create your own synth. You can then embed your synth on your website to share with everyone. This can even be used for multiple people uploading pictures of an event. For example, here is the photosynth of Obama’s presidential inauguration made with hundreds of photographs contributed by multiple people. Below is a snapshot of a popular synth of the Statue of Liberty.

From NASA to National Geographic, you can explore fascinating 3D views of places all over the world. Photosynth uses the Seadragon technology that we’ve covered previously on MakeUseOf.

Photosynth is also integrated with Bing Maps. Over 14,000 geo-tagged photosynths comprising 1.4 million photos uploaded by users like you and me can be explored via the Photosynth Bing Maps application – easily one of the best free Microsoft software products.

#3: World Wide Telescope

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope (WWT) brings terabytes of imagery from the best ground telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope to your desktop. It seamlessly combines the data from these multiple sources into a rich immersive world that you can explore from your home. Use the native Windows client for all features, or the web client for a smaller subset. Guided tours from experts are a great way to introduce the stars and galaxies to youngsters. Exploration is possible not only in the visible light spectrum, but also in non-visible wavelengths such as x-ray and infrared.

The user interface and imagery use Photosynth technology and is said to be significantly better than Google Sky.

#4: Windows Live Skydrive

Windows Live Skydrive offers 25 GB of free space to anyone with a free Live ID for uploading, storing, and sharing files and photos. Most online storage services do not provide anything above 2 GB for free, and Skydrive’s 25 GB remains unparalleled. You can choose to keep files private, share them with contacts, or make them public. People are uploading 4 million photos to Skydrive every day. With Office 2010, you’ll be able to directly save a document on your PC to Skydrive.

Check out MakeUseOf’s coverage of Windows Live to get the most out of Skydrive.

#5: Bing

Bing is one of the best free Microsoft software products. While I still use Google almost exclusively myself, I have no hesitation in nominating Bing in this list of the best free Microsoft products. Why?

For starters, Bing is better than Google for certain kinds of queries. Natural language searches seem to be better in Bing. The categories and suggestions offered by Bing on the left are unique and not matched by Google. Check out these 10 Sites to Compare Google vs Bing Results Side by Side and judge for yourself.

But the real reason I love Bing is because it provides competition to Google. The past decade has seen Google become a monopoly in the search business. With Bing’s increasing popularity, Google is forced to innovate. Compare the rate of feature enhancements announced by Google before and after the arrival of Bing and you will agree that Bing makes Google better. That is certainly good for all of us and the web in general.

Which are your favorite free Microsoft products? Share with us in the comments! Don’t like Microsoft? You’d be interested to read Justin’s article on The Top 5 Free WORST Microsoft Products & Why They Suck and chime in!