14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has been dogfooding (testing internally) the next iteration of Windows Live Essentials for a while, and the company is now gearing up to broaden the Beta outside of Redmond. Chris Jones, corporate vice president of the Windows Live Experience, promises that the Beta of Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 will be rolled out to a select pool of testers outside of Redmond in the next few weeks. Subsequently, the software giant will broaden the Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 Beta program to the public.
“For several months now, we’ve had several thousand people running regular builds of this code inside Microsoft, and we’ll shortly begin expanding this testing to some folks outside Microsoft for additional feedback,” Jones stated. “We will then roll out updates to our web services, followed by betas of our software for Windows PCs, Macs, and phones.”
According to the Corporate VP of the Windows Live Experience, the strongest focus of the Wave 4 development process was placed on the instant messaging client and the email service. In this regard, Windows Live Messenger Wave 4, and Windows Live Hotmail Wave 4 will take center stage. However, all additional components of the Windows Live suite of clients and services will evolve with the advent of Wave 4. Jones pointed out that Live Mesh will also get a boost with the introduction of Wave 4, even though the cross-platform synchronization service has been dormant for some time.
“Our approach is to release betas to the public once we think the build is in pretty good shape, learn through beta usage data and beta user feedback, and make additional refinements that eventually become the final release. Of course, we’ll continue to update the service as we see how you use it every day and hear from you about what’s working and what needs improvement,” Jones added.
There’s no telling when exactly the Beta availability deadline is planned for. Microsoft insists on continuing to keep the release timeline as well as specific details on Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 under a tight lid, despite components such as Messenger having already leaked in the wild.
But one thing is for sure. Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 has been confirmed officially to play nice only with Windows 7 and Windows Vista. None of the clients offered with the next generation of Windows Live Essentials will work on Windows XP.