Guys at Windows7 News passed on a tip from End User Blog, that’s worth sharing out here.
In fact, there are some pretty important things missing in Windows 7 that were in Windows Vista. This includes things such as the Windows Mail program along with its Calendar, the Photo Gallery along with its ability to organize and fix pictures on your machine, and the Family Safety application for making your computer a little more safe for kids and others.
While some people may feel disappointed, I am actually seeing this as an appropriate done-right marketing strategy by Microsoft. It seems like that Microsoft has made the Live Application Package as a more essential application package that can be used by any Windows end users on any Windows platform (XP and later) for free, absolutely no cost. And with IE completely removed from Windows 7 E, we may be seeing IE 8 showing up as one of the component in this Live Essential Package later on.
If you haven’t looked at it, I strongly suggest you go and check it out. I just noticed there are two new components in the package that weren’t there last time when I used it, Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, and Microsoft Outlook Live Add-in. I am particularly interested in the former, which not only integrates hotmail into your Outlook profile, but also synchs Contact, and Calendar with your live account.
You can download the setup file right from http://download.live.com. Once you launch it, it will prepare an installer which generates a list of available apps for you on the fly, so you don’t need to download the setup file each time to see the updated list.