After months of waiting after the closed beta release, the public beta of Windows Live Essentials is finally released! Most of the stuffs in the pack doesn’t have much significant difference from the previous leaked Windows Live Essentials Beta Wave 4 which I have covered previously, but one very noticeable change is that the Windows Live Messenger Beta will now prompt you to connect your WLM to your Facebook or MySpace account (of course not limited to those only, you can add more services later, though no Twitter at the moment) before first sign in, as well as some privacy control. You will also notice that the WLM has much better transition animation of rearrangement of contacts – try to resize your WLM and you will see what I mean.

To see what can be expected from the Beta pack of Windows Live Essentials, you can always check out my previous post  about the Beta Wave 4 – they are almost identical but for sure there are some improvements here. To download it, head to the official page for Windows Live Essentials Beta. There isn’t offline installer at the moment, so if you like to install the full suite of Windows Live Essentials that includes all the program stated below, just click “Download now”. Else if you wish to opt out some of the program, you can click on “Choose the programs you want’’ and you will be downloading an online installer that allows you to select the program to be installed.

You might want to check out the introduction video by Windows Live team. Not a bad one IMO.

Though please be aware that Windows Live Essentials Beta requires Windows Vista or Windows 7. Windows XP is not supported (sorry!). But really, it is time for you to upgrade to Windows 7 since Windows XP is kind of outdated, though support is still there. So don’t wait, go ahead and start download to use the new beta application offered by Microsoft!