Windows Live Wave 4 released, but not for Windows XP

It has been confirmed that future Windows Live applications, going by the code name Wave 4, won’t be made available to Windows XP users.

Following a leak to the web, questions started to be asked as to whether Windows Live Wave 4 applications would be made available to Windows XP, a still widely used operating system. According to statistics provided by Net Applications in March 2010, its market share is estimated at close to 65%.

But according to a screen capture taken from a web page talking about the future beta version of Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 - Windows Live applications common installer, it came to be believed that this would only be made available to Windows Vista and Windows 7.

This is a situation which will not please a lot of Windows XP users, with Microsoft’s vice-president of Windows Live now confirming the fact. Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 will not be compatible with Windows XP. More explicit, it is the Windows Live Wave 4 applications which require an installation on the computer which will not be compatible. This isn’t a surprise concerning Windows Live Movie Maker, as it hasn’t seen a single update on Windows XP since version 2.1, but this also means that there will be no Wave 4 updates for Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Writer, Picture Gallery and even the Windows Live Messenger client.

Commenting on this upcoming release through a blog post signed by himself where he informs users to get ready for Windows Live Wave 4 (most likely through an imminent beta release), Chris Jones indicated that support would be stopped at the current version (and not future) of Windows Live Essentials for Windows XP, although the new web based service engines will still work on Windows XP. This was notably a reference to Windows Live Hotmail and SkyDrive.

Chris Jones noted that Windows XP is almost ten years old, and didn’t contain a modern graphics platform. "We need a new generation graphics platform and the controls it provides which are only found in Windows 7 and Windows Vista".

This means that Windows XP users had better get used to their current versions of Windows Live applications, although a small taste of new services can be had through the web. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Microsoft has already announced that version 9 of Internet Explorer won't be made available for Windows XP, mainly for the reason that hardware acceleration which handles Direct2D isn’t available in the OS (Windows Vista will actually have some updates made so that it is able to handle certain Windows 7 technologies).