Windows Live Essentials 2012 is out. But should you install it?

By Andrea Borman
in Poll Station

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Will you upgrade to Windows Live Essentials 2011 or 2012?  

183 members have voted

  1. 1. Are you still using Windows Live Essentials 2009?

    • Yes
      2
    • No
      121
    • I use Windows Live Messenger 8.5
      0
    • I use MSN Messenger 7.5
      2
    • I don't use Windows Live Essentials or Messenger.
      25

  2. 2. What do you think of the forced upgrade by Microsoft to WLE 2011 version?

  3. 3. Will you install Windows Live Essentials 2012?


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Rising Star

Andrea Borman

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Articuno 1au wrote-

It might be worth pulling those images down given that they have your personal email address on them

Midnight Mick wrote-

I can't beleive you posted an image with your Email clearly visible? LOL!

If you look on my profile at Neowin you can see it is the same email address that is on my profile. There is an option on your Neowin profile to add your user name or contact email to the messenger you are using. And in my case it's Aim Messenger and Windows Live Messenger(2009 version of course.)

And there are 2 versions of Aim now. The new Aim Messenger which is different from the old one or the old Aim. Both of which are still supported and can be run side by side each other. I use the old Aim of course. Andrea Borman.

Community Regular

KRazpopov

Posted
Posted

Well when I installed Skype on my netbook. When it came to Skype testing my webcam and video calling software it said my software was not up to it. Well I cannot remember what the error message exactly was.

But that is rubbish. As my webcam and built in mic work fine with Google Talk,Aim Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. So it's not my netbook. It's Skype that was the problem. Andrea Borman.

Bulls**t. A year ago, I talked to a classmate of mine using Skype, and we had both audio and video enabled. He was using a computer with a Pentium 3 processor at the time (i think it was 900MHz) and 128MB of RAM. If Skype can run on that, then it can damn well run on an f'ing netbook.

Grand Master

Detection

Posted
Posted

Well when I installed Skype on my netbook. When it came to Skype testing my webcam and video calling software it said my software was not up to it. Well I cannot remember what the error message exactly was.

But that is rubbish. As my webcam and built in mic work fine with Google Talk,Aim Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. So it's not my netbook. It's Skype that was the problem. Andrea Borman.

Right, that's what we've all been telling you to update everything for, but no, even Skype is lying to you.

Wakey wakey

(This thread should be in "It's a conspiracy!" )

Community Regular

Auroka

Posted
Posted

If you look on my profile at Neowin you can see it is the same email address that is on my profile. There is an option on your Neowin profile to add your user name or contact email to the messenger you are using. And in my case it's Aim Messenger and Windows Live Messenger(2009 version of course.)

And there are 2 versions of Aim now. The new Aim Messenger which is different from the old one or the old Aim. Both of which are still supported and can be run side by side each other. I use the old Aim of course. Andrea Borman.

5Ns25.png

I know some people like to cling to old software but this thread is weird. Not sure if crazy or troll.

It's getting really hard to tell at this point. :/

Rising Star

Andrea Borman

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Right, that's what we've all been telling you to update everything for, but no, even Skype is lying to you.

Wakey wakey

(This thread should be in "It's a conspiracy!" )

Of course my webcam software is up to date. I installed Skype on a brand new Windows 7 netbook. Andrea Borman.

Grand Master

Detection

Posted
Posted

Of course my webcam software is up to date. I installed Skype on a brand new Windows 7 netbook. Andrea Borman.

Windows 7 is 3 years old, what has being brand new got to do with it being updated ?

  • Brandon H and Skyfrog
  • Like 2
Community Regular

KRazpopov

Posted
Posted

OK, let me just say a few things here:

Firstly, get with the times, Andrea. You can't use WLE 2009 forever. At some point, you'll be forced to use something newer (say WLE 2019) and that rapid jump in versions is going to confuse you a lot. Whereas if you upgrade on each version, you won't have as steep of a learning curve.

Secondly, learn a bit about computer security. By not having an antivirus installed, coupled with using old versions of sotware (which definitely have more exploits), you're just crying to get a virus on your system.

Thirdly, start using operating systems as they were designed to be used. Rather than turning Windows 7/ Windows 8 into a half-a**ed mix of Windows 98 & XP, try using the OS as it is out of the box. I'm sure Windows 7 is more efficient in day-to-day usage without all those XP elements lying around it. Just because you're not comfortable with the way a certain function works in an OS does not mean you need to bring said OS' functionality back by 10+ years.

Fourth: Stop moaning about the ribbon. I'm putting this in its' own paragraph, because it seems to be one of your main reasons to avoid anything remotely modern. As it has been stated at least 20 times in all your threads combined, there is a way to hide the ribbon in almost any application, after which the difference between a ribbon version of an application and its' menu counterpart is absolutely minimal.

Fifth: Stop putting your name at the end of each of your posts. It's already visible in both your username and your signature. You do not need to spell it a third time in the frigging god-damned post! (If it isn't apparent, this has started to get on my nerves.)

If I have to, I'm going to save this post on my PC and copy-paste it every time you start a thread.

Of course my webcam software is up to date. I installed Skype on a brand new Windows 7 netbook. Andrea Borman.

Unless you ran a separate driver installer for your webcam, there is no way that the driver is the newest one. Especially considering you're running a new installation of Windows 7.

Mentor

argonite

Posted
Posted

Andrea Borman, you are going to make the life of some IT person very hard if you continue being stubborn about outdated technology and you're frustrating the people on this forum.

Please understand that the new Windows Live (and other software as well) includes:

  • bug fixes
  • security updates
  • performance improvements
  • compatibility with the latest protocol
  • new features
  • a new UI

You dislike 1 out of the 6 things I listed. Seems like you have 5 of 6 reasons to upgrade. If you can refuse all six reasons, you win this thread and I give up.

You mentioned that you don't upgrade IE for the same reason. Look, I stopped using IE a long time ago, and I probably won't go back. But I still keep IE updated and regularly do cleanups. I don't want some nasty virus exploiting a hole in any outdated software on my computer.

Grand Master

Rigby

Posted
Posted

Why is it when I fix peoples PCs there are always full of out of date software and the desktop and taskbar is full of icons.

The icons I can kind of understand since many people don't know how to disable them or even realize it's possible, but mostly it's because they don't care. Same with updates, as long as their computer turns on and they can play Farmville they don't care about that "nerdy" stuff like updates. I always tell them I updated their computer for them along with whatever else I did (which is usually removing tons of malware) and they often seem impressed, like I did something really technical by running Windows Update. :laugh:

Rising Star

Andrea Borman

Posted
  • Author
Posted

XMac wrote-

Firstly, get with the times, Andrea. You can't use WLE 2009 forever. At some point, you'll be forced to use something newer (say WLE 2019) and that rapid jump in versions is going to confuse you a lot. Whereas if you upgrade on each version, you won't have as steep of a learning curve.

Well 2019 is a long time away. And by then they may not have Windows Live.And they may not have Internet by then.Who knows?

But what about Windows Messenger 4.7. That comes bundled with Windows XP. That does not work because it is no longer supported.So you can't even log into it. But Windows Update won't update it.

But Windows Live Messenger 2009 IS the updated version.

But when support ends for Windows XP in April 2014,they may also end support for WLE 2009. Andrea Borman.

Grand Master

Rigby

Posted
Posted

And they may not have Internet by then.Who knows?

Yeah the internet will be replaced by telepathy and we'll all have flying cars. :laugh:

But what about Windows Messenger 4.7. That comes bundled with Windows XP. That does not work because it is no longer supported.So you can't even log into it. But Windows Update won't update it.

Windows Messenger was a completely seperate program and was discontinued. It is not updated because there are no updates for it, it's dead.

But Windows Live Messenger 2009 IS the updated version.

No it's not, nor is it up to date. 2012 is the current version, the 2009 version is OLD. There is no reason on earth to keep using it.

Grand Master

Orange Battery

Posted
Posted

I completely understand your reasons for not wanting to update but you must remember this is a Microsoft real time service and therefore they control what version you use.

You may prefer to use an old version which better suits your needs but that isn't going to happen. Most of the Neowin replies will make out your an idiot but then its very easy to insult rather than understand the opinions of others.

My best advise is to start looking for another service, if your opinion is valid then hopefully enough people will follow suit and another company that listens to its users more when it comes to this service will become the standard.

When MS or any other big company makes it mind up then it doesn't matter what its users think, the limited trials have already been done - but at the same time its a great opportunity for the competition to gain some ground.

Mentor

ArialBlue

Posted
Posted

Skype runs happily on my Single core 1ghz Arm 7 based phone.

I think the 1.x ghz Intel Atoms (or equiv.) you are running can probably handle it..

They can. Without any problem.

Andrea clearly has some sort of psychiatric disorders; you can observe them to some degree through her YouTube rambles.

As frustrating as she may be, she is clearly not and cannot be made aware of her frustrating tendencies. That said, you have two options. One is to entertain it all, like the special kid in class, or to ignore her completely.

She is subscribed - that is why she is avoiding a permanent ban.

Either that, or like me, too many people enjoy her "charms" (that is making fun of the disordered).

Veteran

~Johnny

Posted
Posted

FYI. visually WLE 2011 & WE 2012 are nearly exactly the same - there are no new UI additions, just improved features.

Other than the increased RAM footprint in basically every program over 2008, there's no reason to stick with 2008. 2012 has better performance thanks to Direct2D GPU acceleration, an improved feature set and much better security. Frankly, WLM doesn't look that different either.

If your netbook has 512MB - 1GB of RAM, I can understand avoiding the newer versions (and most certainly the newer versions of Skype too, which have become experts at hogging memory), but other than that, you'll grow to like them.

Grand Master

Tha Bloo Monkee

Posted
Posted

i started using pidgin recently for MSN/WLM cause the official client is way too bloated nowadays :/ (with a-patch it's not so bad).

:s That interface is hideous in those screenshots!! ThaBlooMonkee.

Veteran

~Johnny

Posted
Posted

FYI Andrea, the new Messenger (with a little bit of APatch) looks quite nice and minimal -

Hgq5n.png

Or if you want a super minimal, good looking, and very RAM light client, look into Trillian. It's well worth using.

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That's when I started looking around the official TerraMaster forums, and I found a guide that helpfully explains that you won't get anywhere with OpenClaw unless you have a paid plan, which is disappointing because I imagined there would be an option to use a local LLM as I do in SubtitleEdit with Whisper-XXL. In addition, with the marketing imagery on the official site, it says that the OpenClaw feature is "all processed 100% locally for absolute privacy." which led me to believe that I could install a local LLM, not one that required paid tokens. In any case, TerraMaster does not provide guidance for this new feature, which was also a selling point of the F4-425 Pro! My contact also provided clarification about the above points I raised with TerraMaster Since it is not in the scope of the review to add paid services, I'll leave that to the people who are more qualified with OpenClaw. F4-425 Pro Surveillance App TOS also comes with a Surveillance app, which is not installed by default; it can be found in the App Market recommended section. In addition, after installing, it doesn't drop a shortcut on the Desktop or top taskbar, but you can "Send to Desktop" from the App Market listing for the app for a quick way to open it. Adding my Reolink POE doorbell camera was painless. TerraMaster doesn't appear to have a repository of preconfigured cameras; instead, the camera must be added using ONVIF or RTSP. No mobile Surveillance app TerraMaster still doesn't have a dedicated Surveillance app, although from searching online, Surveillance can be used and managed through the TNAS mobile app. I tried this with the updated TNAS mobile app beta in combination with TOS 7 and got a message that Surveillance was "Only accessible through web browser," so I reckon this must be limited to the stable versions of TOS 6 and the mobile app. More quirks In addition, whenever I minimized the Live View window in the browser Surveillance app, the feed appeared to switch to the Low-bandwidth stream, and there was no way to get the High-quality stream back. To get the High-quality stream back, I had to close Live View and then reopen it. Benchmarking A pretty cool feature of the TOS 7 is that it allows you to install directly to the NVMe M.2 SSD. In order to do that, you would have to leave out any HDDs during initialization, and even then, the system partitions are always written to two HDDs when they are eventually added. With three NVMe slots, this also gives an interesting scenario where you could build a TRAID storage Pool for installing all your apps and Docker on, and keep the third for SSD cache on the HDD pool. Limitless options! SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 5 GbE hub was well within acceptable ranges. Although the read result on SATA was a little less than with the F4-425 Plus, for some reason, while writes were generally better. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. TOS 7, which, as of testing, is still in Beta, comes with an App Center that has a bunch of handy programs you can install right off the bat, such as Emby, Plex, Docker, as well as in-house Backup and Surveillance solutions. As you can imagine, any media streaming services you would want to host off the F4-425 Pro will work great, thanks to the Intel Core N350 CPU and its 16 GB of DDR5 memory. Accessing from mobile is only possible if Security Isolation Mode is disabled, which can put your NAS at risk from external sources, so there was no way to access it from the TNAS Mobile app. It's also quiet. I had this sat next to my computer on my work desk for the past week, and I did wonder if the noise I was accustomed to with NAS devices would annoy me, but all I could hear was a soft whirring of the rear fan (which was a little annoying) when the disks were not actively copying or reading data. Conclusion So what have I learned? Unfortunately, this release raises a few important questions and concerns that I feel haven't been adequately addressed. What I didn't like Our variant shipped with TOS 7 beta, and it's advised not to use it in a production environment. I feel that's a bit limiting on an $800 device. The mobile app is also still in beta and does not support some of the first-party apps, like Surveillance, and it still has quite a few bugs. I am a bit confused about the OpenClaw marketing along with the F4-425 Pro. I feel like that if it's going to be a main selling point, then offer official guidance on how to get started with it. TerraMaster recommends enabling SPC, but then markets the NAS for use with OpenClaw, which requires disabling SPC to be able to use it, opening up genuine security concerns for the NAS; and that's before you get into the security concerns of OpenClaw itself. Of course, the above issues won't be a problem if you decide to install something else on it, or even go back to the stable TOS 6. I wish TerraMaster had just given TOS 7 as opt-in rather than shipping with it. TOS 7 has been available as a preview since December 2025 (so well before my last TerraMaster review), and according to a thread on Reddit where a user shared a screenshot from the TerraMaster Facebook page, it is scheduled to launch today, June 23, but there's nothing about that in the TerraMaster news blog. My contact confirmed over email that TOS 7 exits beta today. The rubber feet also deserve a mention as they continue to be a problem, with them coming unstuck the moment you shift the F4-425 Pro anywhere on your desk. What I liked What it comes down to, though, aside from what I already mentioned, you are still getting a quality, affordable device here, so recommending it will depend on the individual's use case. If you're just looking for a relatively small NAS device to manage virtual machines on, backup your files, and take care of your home theater streaming, then it is a great device that will certainly futureproof you for some time. It provides good performance, takes up little space, and is, on the whole, very quiet. Four bays afford proper redundancy using TRAID or RAID 5, and you can even expand on storage capacity by adding the 2-bay D5, or 4-bay D8 Hybrid DAS over a USB 3.2 (10Gbps) link. Considering the 2024 releases were more about power, with the likes of an Intel Core i5-1235U high-end laptop CPU under the hood, I asked my contact last time if we could expect more of the same in higher-end models and was told: It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N350 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the F4-425 Pro is intended for, media streaming and backup. The only downside is still the clear lack of community and even staff support on the official forums. In the past, I have had topics go unanswered for days, or there would be generic-type "we've noted this and passed it onto our developer team" type responses. Along with the other things I mentioned, it all ends up costing it a couple of points. If you are comfortable with the command line, Docker, and setting up TrueNAS or Unraid, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. In TOS, the apps are a bit lacking, and things don't always work as expected.\ AI NAS?! What has become clear to me this year is that we are going to start seeing all kinds of "AI NAS" come to market, and while that might be good for us consumers, be diligent and research these claims. Although the F4-425 Pro technically comes with AI, it is really using a cloud service that is externally sourced off-device through the third party OpenClaw app. My colleague did review a newcomer to the NAS space earlier this year, and it includes a local AI assistant inside the Zettlab D4 NAS, and they do not even use AI in the product name, check out Chris' review here. Where to buy and a discount coupon However, it does not change the fact that this is truly a great entry-level home media-class NAS that you can buy right now. TerraMaster is having a 20% off launch discount, plus you can also still apply our unique 10% off coupon on checkout, which only works on the official website. So here is a breakdown of the pricing that is only valid on the official TerraMaster website. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $575.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $503.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £525.59 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £460.79 Use NEOWIN coupon code during checkout for 10% discount Over on Amazon US and UK, the F4-425 Pro also gets a 20% launch discount, but here, the above 10% coupon cannot be applied. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for $639.99 at Amazon US (was $799.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for $559.99 at Amazon US (was $699.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for £583.99 at Amazon UK (was £729.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for £511.99 at Amazon UK (was £639.99) As an Amazon Associate, when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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