Windows Live Essentials 2011 to receive update soon

Ron

Microsoft is on track to release an update to its Windows Live Essentials 2011 this week that is set to bring several new features and enhancements. Windows Live Essentials is suite of freeware productivity applications from Microsoft.

Expect to see numerous enhancements that improve performance, full support for SSL in Windows Live Mail, enhanced Bing Bar, better Messenger and photo gallery, to name a few. Microsoft made the announcement on its Inside Windows Live blog.

Here are a few of things we think you’ll find the most interesting:

Mail: We fixed a sorting issue in the Sent items folder and improved the upload reliability and instrumentation in Photo mail.
Messenger: We fixed a couple of stability issues and made various changes for improved voice and video quality. We fixed an issue that was causing sound to be lost after upgrading, and we improved performance when displaying the MSN Today page in the main window.
Photo Gallery: We implemented various bug fixes for crashes related to launching Photo Gallery through Autoplay and facial recognition.
And more: We made many other usability, performance, and stability improvements across the suite of Windows Live Essentials apps.

Microsoft plans on releasing this update in 2 phases. Phase one consists of a download which will be availalbe on Live.com and on Microsoft’s Download Center. Phase two consist of Live Essentials 2011 customers being prompted to update to the latest version. It is, however, an optional update.

The build number for this update is 15.4.3538.0513.