Jonas Stawski

So I am testing the new Windows Live Beta suit of products. I’ve only decided to test the products I used the most: Windows Live Writer, Outlook Connector, and Windows Live Messenger.

Out of those 3 products I found that the most hidden gem is the Outlook Connector. A lot of people don’t know about it and it really is simple and powerful. What does it do? It synchronizes your Hotmail, Live, MSN, and Custom Domains email accounts with Outlook 2003 and 2007. One of the bad things I found with it was that it did not allow you to synchronize your calendar for free. You had to be a paid subscriber to get that ability. With the new Outlook Connector 12.1 you can now synchronize your emails, contacts, and calendar. Now that is cool!

Here’s my calendar in Outlook:

and here’s the same calendar in the web interface after a simple Send And Receive:

Something cool is that you also get 2 extra calendars, one for birthdays and the other for US Holidays (I guess you only get this one if you are registered in the US).

Here’s some feedback for the Calendar team in Windows Live. If I will add an all day event there is the possibility that I will be out of the office/home and I will have no access to email therefore they should immediately ask me if I want to set up an out of the office reply, something that is available today with Windows Live Hotmail.

I also tried sending meeting invites from my Exchange account to the live account and I never received the invites although the Sent Items folders show the invitation being sent. Why?
UPDATE: I ended up receiving the meeting requests, but about 5 hours later (after the meeting was finished!). Maybe there was some email problems. Keep posted for more information on this.

Keep posted for more features and feedback on the new Live Products

Happy Betaing!