Windows Live Essentials 2011 beta 2

Microsoft has released a second beta version of their Windows Live essentials 2011 program. Facebook chat will appear in this version of Windows Live Messenger.

After a first beta version of Windows Live Essentials 2011 was released in June, Microsoft has now made a second beta available, even if they have instead preferred to refresh this release with just a small update. If everything goes well, the final version is anticipated for September.

Windows Live Essentials 2011 groups together numerous applications, with the Ruban user interface being present on all: Windows Live Messenger (instant messenger client), Windows Live Mail (email client), Windows Live Photo Gallery (picture gallery), Windows Live Syncn or Devices (data synchronisation between multiple computers), Windows Live Writer (blogs), Windows Live Movie Maker (film and slideshow creation) and Windows Live Parental Control (parental control). A Bing toolbar is also present allowing you to browse the internet.

For this new beta release, Microsoft has announced numerous improvements in terms of performance and quality of service:

• Connection, and fast refreshing of contact and social network streams in Messenger
• The Messenger video chat uses 30% less CPU resources through the use of the GPU 
• Improvement of the face recognition in the Picture Gallery 
• Movie Maker allows you to put High definition videos online with SkyDrive (480x640 instead of 320x480), support for higher bit rate content and Flickr support (video sharing) 
• Better integration of Writer with Office (copy-paste from Office programs while better keeping the formatting) 
• Mail better integrated with Gmail through the automatic treatment of Spam and Deleted Items folders 
• Filtering is 35% faster with Parental Control 
• Correction of numerous bugs including some annoying ones which lead to system lock ups.

With Windows Live Messenger it is possible to follow your contacts latest news on social networks and to send content, including in Facebook. The new beta version goes even further with the integration of the social network, now integrating Facebook Chat. From Messenger, the user will be able to chat with all of their Facebook friends without connecting to the site. The conversations will be directly displayed on Facebook Chat.

The new Windows Live Essentials 2011 beta can be downloaded from this page. Don’t forget that Windows XP users won’t be able to use this release and the new Windows Live applications.