In Part 1 of my look at bundled applications in Windows Vista, you saw Windows Photo Gallery, Windows DVD Maker and Windows Media Centre. In Part 2, I’m going to take a look at the new Outlook Express, called Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker and Windows Defender.
Windows Mail
Windows Mail is the new name for an application we have had since Windows 98, Outlook Express. At first glance, it looks very much like Outlook Express 6 for Windows XP. In fact, save a few new icons and a new Vista toolbar, it is very much like Outlook Express. As you can see from the About window below, not much has yet changed and Windows Mail feels very beta-ish and flaky. I’ve no doubt that there will be significant changes yet to Windows Mail, considering we are only at Beta 2.
There are some new features, however, but I wouldn’t really call them innovative. The lack of junk mail filtering in Outlook Express has made it a terrible email client previously, and finally, that has been addressed in Windows Mail. Unfortunately, I don’t actually know how effective it is, so I can’t comment on that.
A good point about Windows Mail is that it now sports the new search functionality included with Windows Vista. Good job on Microsoft’s part for getting this into Windows Mail.
A feature that really should have made it into Windows Mail (and might still yet, considering its relative infancy) is feeds. Microsoft have embraced feeds in Internet Explorer 7, and in the beta version of Office 2007 have extended the IE feeds into Outlook. I see no reason why similar functionality shouldn’t be integrated into Windows Mail, as having email and feeds in one place would make sense to a lot of people. Of course, Microsoft could be deliberately leaving this out to convince people to get Office.
The name change, to Windows Mail, seems to echo the fact that all the other bundled applications are also prefixed with ‘Windows’. But the name Windows Mail also bears similarity to Mac OS X Mail, which, in my opinion, looks a far better email client at the moment than Windows Mail, although I haven’t had a chance to use it extensively. It might also be a ploy by Microsoft to get people to stop confusing Microsoft Office Outlook and Outlook Express and make the distinction, Windows Mail for the home user, and Office Outlook for the business user.
Overall, Windows Mail does not feel like the rest of the Vista system; at the moment it is in desperate need of refreshing and adding more features to bring it up to the level of other basic email clients out there.
Windows Movie Maker
Windows Movie Maker in Vista, again, looks extremely similar to its Windows XP counterpart. In fact, the only visible differences are icons, and the new Windows Media Player 11-style playing controls on the monitor area on the right.
Presumably, however, this means that Microsoft are getting round to it. If they make Windows Movie Maker as good an experience as Windows Photo Gallery and DVD Maker, then they really do have a winner.
There have been some stability problems with Movie Maker. Playback of the sample videos included with Vista seemed slow and the playing controls were not always responsive; sometimes they refused to work at all. At the moment, this application, once again, feels very ‘beta’ and “I’m not finished yet”. I look forward to seeing what changes Microsoft will make for Release Candidate 1 (RC1) of Windows Vista.
Windows Defender
Windows Defender has been causing some real controversy since it was initially announced, as an anti-spyware solution to be included with Windows Vista. Windows Defender is the product of the beta application Microsoft AntiSpyware which was released for Windows XP. In fact, if you’re running XP you can try Defender yourself by downloading the beta from Microsoft.
Windows Defender’s integration into Vista (and even XP) is very well done. Updates to Windows Defender’s spyware definitions are published through Windows Update, which is very convienient, because it is one less thing to remember to have to update.
The quick scan mode, which is chosen by default when you do a spyware scan, finishes quickly (under 2 minutes on my test machine). This looks in common places where spyware tries to hide itself.
Full scan, however, takes significant time, as Windows Defender by default scans inside archives. That’s not just .zip files, but any type of archive you can think of including compressed game files, temporary installation .cab files and even Linux .rpm package files (if they are on a Windows-visible partiton). OK, that does mean spyware can’t escape through, but it is time-consuming. Archive scanning can be turned off in Tools > Options, thankfully. There’s also an option to exclude certain locations from the scan.
Defender has real-time protection, which is a great bonus. However, it is limited to checking things like Auto-Start programs and Internet Explorer Add-ons. That means Defender throws a lot of alerts when you install a program that wants to start at startup, or when you change certain Internet Explorer settings. It could be easier to allow the changes; at the moment you have to click a notification, choose the actions, and click Apply.
Overall, Defender is an excellent anti-spyware product and has the added bonus of being free to both Vista and XP users. Give it a try, if you haven’t already
Grand Conclusion
Like it or lump it (and if you’re a software vendor it’s likely to be the latter), bundled applications in Windows are here. Many of the headline new bundles feel smooth and integrated with the Vista user experience, namely Windows Photo Gallery. Although the bundled applications don’t exactly boast functionality you can’t get from a third-party application (and I bet a lot of third-party apps can do a better job), the trade off you get is complete integration within Windows. So, for example, you can export your photos right into DVD Maker from Photo Gallery.
Also, it means that the good things about the new version of Windows extend into the individual application. So, you get search capability in Photo Gallery, Media Player, and even Windows Mail.
The downside of bundles is that you are once again putting everything in one company’s hands. It’s something that personally I don’t like doing, I think we should encourage competition within any sphere of business. Competition makes everyone’s products better. It’s been Picasa and maybe iPhoto that have drawn Microsoft to build Photo Gallery, and I’ve no doubt that soon Picasa and iPhoto (Picasa have done it already with Web Albums) will become better because of what Microsoft are offering.
Microsoft do have the advantage of being able to bundle, and that’s what this article is all about. Let’s take the Picasa argument again. Picasa is a great program, but not everyone who uses Windows will have heard of it. By the time everyone’s running Vista, everyone will most likely be using Photo Gallery, because it’s just ‘there’.
Is this right? I think it’s up to you to decide. Given the choice, would you get the better product that didn’t feel integrated, or would you use the one provided just because it was ‘there’?
