Windows Live Installer (Wave 2) The first appearance of a
Windows Live Dashboard is seen with the initial "Windows Live Wave 2" unified installers from
Windows Live Messenger 8.5,
Mail and
Writer that was released on May 30, 2007. In the "Windows Live Wave 2" suite of services,
Windows Live Installer was the name of the website and software given to serve the purposes of allowing users to discover, download and install Windows Live software and services. Users were able to select the
Windows Live software they wished to install on the website, and the website would pass on the information to the unified installer software such that the installer will only download and install those applications selected.
Windows Live Essentials 2009 (Wave 3) The
Windows Live Installer application was significantly updated with the subsequent "Windows Live Wave 3" release of applications, with the new inclusion of
Windows Live Movie Maker (beta) and
Microsoft Office Outlook Connector to its suite of products. On October 29, 2008, it was announced at the
Professional Developers Conference 2008 that
Windows Live Installer would be renamed as
Windows Live Essentials, and would be integrated into
Windows 7 to allow users to download the included Windows Live applications. However, the Windows Live Essentials applications will not be "bundled" with the Windows 7 operating system. This should allow more frequent updates to the Windows Live Essentials applications outside of major operating system releases. This release included many changes since the previous beta release based on user feedback. A significant visual change in this release was the introduction of new application icons which added a common design theme to all the Live Essentials applications. The words "beta" were removed from most of the build numbers. On January 7, 2009, the "beta refresh" versions were released as the final versions, with the notable exception of Windows Live Movie Maker. and again on August 19, 2009, when Windows Live Movie Maker was released out of beta and significantly updated with additional features since the beta version released in December 2008. The final build number was 14.0.8117.0416. After the release of Windows Live Essentials 2011, which dropped support for
Windows XP, Windows Live Essentials 2009 was renamed to
Windows Live Essentials for Windows XP and was made available for Windows XP users to help maintain the product user base. Some applications, such as Windows Live Movie Maker, were not included with Windows Live Essentials for Windows XP.
Windows Live Essentials 2011 (Wave 4) user interface displaying numerous image editing options Microsoft released a public beta for the next major update for Windows Live Essentials dubbed "Wave 4" on June 24, 2010. The updated applications include
Windows Live Messenger,
Mail,
Photo Gallery,
Movie Maker,
Writer,
Family Safety,
Mesh, and
Messenger Companion. For Windows Live Mesh, the application has been rewritten to be based on the previous Live Mesh and will allow PC and Mac users to keep their documents, pictures and music in sync across multiple computers. It was also announced that
Windows Live Toolbar will be discontinued and replaced by the
Bing Bar. In addition, the
ribbon user interface was incorporated into Mail, Photo Gallery, and Writer. The Wave 4 beta has dropped support for
Windows XP;
Windows Vista or
Windows 7 is required for its use. and that update became available through
Windows Update from March 20, 2011. On May 2, 2012, Microsoft announced the re-branding of Windows Live. Although all applications in Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite will continue to function on Windows Vista, 7, and 8, there will be no significant updates made to these applications in the future. In June 2014, Microsoft announced that Windows Live Essentials 2011 would no longer be available for download on Windows Vista.
Windows Essentials 2012 (Wave 5) Microsoft released Windows Essentials 2012 on August 7, 2012, for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users. Windows Essentials 2012 included SkyDrive for Windows (later renamed
OneDrive), and dropped Windows Live Mesh, Messenger Companion and Bing Bar. Microsoft Family Safety is also installed for Windows 7 users only, as Windows 8 has built-in family safety functionalities. While the program is no longer available for download by Microsoft, it is still possible today to download the original pack for Windows Essentials 2012. Such links are provided in the form of links to the
Wayback Machine, and the suite can also be found on the
Internet Archive. ==Deprecation==