Now there is a simple and free solution designed to let you easily manage both your Windows Live Hotmail or Office Live Mail accounts from a single centralized location. Microsoft announced that the final version of Office Outlook Connector is up for grabs as a free download. In early June, the Redmond company introduced its first beta build of a product aiming to bridge the gap between the Office Outlook desktop email client and the online email services. The Connector will integrate seamlessly with both Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003.

"The Microsoft Office Outlook Connector lets you sync your Windows Live Hotmail account up with Outlook 2003 and 2007. Remember, in order to sync your Calendar you need to be a paid subscriber of MSN Premium, Office Live Essentials, or Office Live Premium to get that added functionality with this release. If you are not a paid subscriber of these services, you will see an error in syncing your calendar in Outlook but you will be about to sync up you email messages and contacts just fine," revealed Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc.

"Outlook Connector enables you to use your Live Hotmail accounts within Outlook: read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages; manage your Live Mail Contacts; use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages; manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place," Microsoft explained in the description of the downloads, adding that a paid subscription automatically implies that the Outlook Connector sill also permit the the user to "manage, share, and synchronize your Windows Live Calendar in Outlook and access Tasks and Notes."

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector is another example of how the company is connecting its online suite of services under the Windows Live brand umbrella with the desktop software offerings on top of the Windows XP and Windows Vista platforms. Adept of the Software plus Services approach, the Redmond company is building the Windows Live cloud operating system as an extension of the Windows client platform, but also an infrastructure of interoperability between the two.

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector 3 was tested by Softpedia as being 100% Clean and is available for download here.