Manas T

Now this is really a nice move from Microsoft.

Microsoft has announced that it will not be shipping Windows Mail, Photo Gallery & Movie Maker along with Windows 7. Instead users can download the Windows Live programs themselves as and when they need it.

In a follow-up interview on Monday, Windows Vista general manager Brian Hall said Microsoft made the decision to remove the tools from Windows for several reasons, including a desire to issue new operating system releases more quickly than it has in the past. The move also removes the confusion of offering and supporting two different programs that perform essentially similar functions.

“It makes it much cleaner,” Hall said.

A huge step to a cleaner Windows install.

But as to how Microsoft will advertise its Windows Live services inside Windows 7 OS remains to be seen. If users have to download a mail client they can download Thunderbird instead, why to go for Windows Mail. Or for Photo Gallery, Picasa can do the job. So if MS is removing Windows Mail, Photo Gallery it will have to aggressively pursue the users to download the Live programs.

The Windows 7 news website has posted screenshots of the new M3 build of Windows 7.

Some of the prominent changes that are visible in the Windows 7 screenshots are :

1. WordPad and Paint now sport ribbons similar to MS Office 2007. But I did not see any new features in the two.
2. The Display properties, Start Menu have also been changed to be more simpler and user friendly.
3. Windows & now bundles IE8 by default.
4. There is also a Windows Media Player Lite which appears when you click on a video file. I hope it supports more formats.
5. Various small changes in Windows Explorer & Start menu.

Check out the full screenshot gallery

If the absence of add-ons is stopping you from using Google Chrome as your default browser then here is some good news for you.

Google’s new Web browser eventually will support add-ons and user scripts à la Firefox Add-ons and Greasemonkey, Google engineer Ojan Vafai said during a panel discussion on the future of Web browsers at Web 2.0 Expo in New York on Friday.

“There’s two different kinds of add-ons," Vafai said. "The Firefox things extend your browser, so to speak, and then there are user scripts. We intend to do both of those in Google Chrome." Greasemonkey’s founder, Aaron Boodman, actually works on the Google Chrome team.

That is good news for many waiting to use Google Chrome. But there is no timeline as to when Google Chrome will actually be having add-on support.

Waiting till then….

Via – Information World