Have you ever sat in front of your computer and wished you had a program to manage your personal e-mail much like you do at the office? Is there a special birthday or anniversary coming up for a loved one, and you’ve just been dying to tell their story through a video slideshow set to music? Ever wanted a way to view and edit your photos without spending a fortune on a graphics program to do so? If you’ve ever pondered these things, and own a Microsoft Windows computer with an operating system ranging from 7 to 10, you’re in luck! You can download these programs and more in one bundle. For free. It’s not too good to be true.
When you purchased a computer with a Windows operating system on it “back in the day”, it came preloaded with everything that Microsoft had to offer. It makes sense, doesn’t it? When you release something, release everything! Anyway, the thinking changed, and useful programs that didn’t come standard with every “type” of Windows release were bundled together, first in 2006, and known as Windows Live Essentials. Today, we’re in the fifth “wave” of the bundle, and it has been rebranded again, this time as Windows Essentials. Windows Essentials includes: Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail, and Writer. These programs are supported across the board from 7 through 10. Family Safety is compatible with only Windows 7, and OneDrive will work in all operating systems except 8.1. Windows Photo Gallery organizes your pictures, enables you to edit them, and also to share them easily. It can replace the original photo viewer that comes preloaded with Windows if you’re so inclined. Photos can be cropped, resized, have red-eye corrected, and new photos may be imported directly from your camera. Windows Movie Maker allows you to create and edit videos, as well as easily export them to social media sites such as Facebook and Youtube. Windows Live Mail is a free e-mail client. E-mail addresses from services such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail can be configured to use the Windows Live Mail program to send and receive, schedule events, and basically work as Microsoft Outlook would in a work environment if you use that on a daily basis. Windows Live Writer is a blog publishing program. It’s compatible with popular blogging platforms such as WordPress, Windows Live Spaces, Sharepoint, Blogger, and LiveJournal. OneDrive is a file hosting service allowing you to saves files to the cloud and access them across multiple platforms. Files can be accessed from a web browser or mobile device, and free accounts are granted with 5 GB of storage space. If you’re familiar with Google Drive, this is Microsoft’s version of that. Finally, Microsoft Family Safety is a parental monitoring program. You can filter the content your family is allowed to access online, including results from Google or Bing searches, blocking of social media sites, and websites can be added to a “safe list” on a case-by case basis.
These are some pretty useful programs, don’t you think? If you’d like to experiment with them, they’re just a download away. Click here to access the download page. Scroll down until you see the heading entitled “Worldwide Downloads”. Click on your country, and your download will begin automatically. Click “Yes” to allow the software to install, and the installer will begin. You’ll be asked whether you want to install everything (“Install all of Windows Essentials”), or you can “Choose the programs you want to install”. If you chose the latter, check each program you’re interested in to select it, then click “Install” in the bottom right corner of the window and your computer will do the rest.
In my mind, Windows Essentials provides a lot of value. I can’t tell you the number of videos I’ve made for myself and clients in Windows Movie Maker alone! It’s a mystery why Microsoft would make this software bundle so difficult to find. You’d think they’d be shouting it from the rooftops. Nevertheless, it exists, and now you know where to find it. If nothing else you can’t beat the price – free!