Windows Experience Blog : Windows Live, Windows Live Messenger

Upgrade to the Latest Windows Live Messenger Release

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:35:57 GMT

The Windows Live Messenger Team is committed to delivering a safe and secure instant messaging experience to its users. In order to do this, they are asking anyone who is still on Windows Live Messenger versions 8.1, 8.5 and 14.0 to upgrade to the newest version of Windows Live Messenger. This can be done today via download.live.com.

Over the course of the next few months, there will be a phased approach to get everyone updated to the latest Windows Live Messenger release.

For more information, see this blog post from the Windows Live Messenger Team.

Customizing Your Windows Live Messenger Contact List

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:50:26 GMT

This is the first of several upcoming blog posts on different aspects of Windows Live Essentials. For more information on the Windows 7 + Windows Live experience – click here.

First, I would like to congratulate the Windows Live Messenger Team for 10 years of Messenger! Find out how *you* can celebrate the 10 Year Anniversary of Windows Live Messenger by reading this blog post from the Messenger Team. I have the pleasure of being able to say I’ve been a Messenger user since V1. It’s been exciting to see the progression of Messenger over the last decade.

Today, I use Windows Live Messenger as a primary communication vehicle (outside of email) with friends and colleagues. As you can imagine, I have a pretty big contact list. Being able to manage and customize the layout of my contact list is pretty important.

By default, Messenger will show all contacts in your contact list online or offline, as well as groups. Messenger will also show the tab bar, favorites, and What’s New feed. To customize this default layout of your contact list, you can click the contact list layout button next to the add contact button in Messenger (see below screenshot).

The Options window will appear with the layout options for your contact list.

This is where you can customize the layout of your contacts list in Messenger to fit your needs.

For me, because I have so many contacts in my contacts list, I find that I am doing a lot of scrolling between the different categories. Looking at my own IM behavior, I’m usually chatting with contacts that are online. So to help alleviate some of the scrolling, I have unchecked “Show offline contacts”. This means that contacts that are offline will not appear in my contact list in Messenger until they come online.

You can view contacts on your contact list by different sizes in Messenger: Large, Medium, Small or Status only. To consume less space on my contacts list, I’ve chosen to view contacts by status only. What’s great here is you can choose the sizes of your contacts by your main contact list and favorite contacts just in case you want your favorite contacts viewed differently than the rest.

If you someone who’s not using Windows Live Groups, you can uncheck “Show groups” so this category doesn’t appear on your contact list. You can also do this for other parts of the window on this menu too.

Hopefully talking about this helps those of you with large contact lists like me manage and customize the layout for a better experience in Messenger!

One last thing – did you know that Windows Live uses a unified contacts “store”? That means the same contacts you have in Messenger are the same contacts you have in Hotmail or in Windows Live Mail on the PC. More on this and other aspects of Windows Live Essentials in upcoming blog posts!

An Overview of Recent Updates to Windows Live

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:33:44 GMT

Over the past few weeks, we’ve introduced quite a few improvements to Windows Live. I thought it would be nice to list all those improvements in a single blog post for everyone to read.

New web activities: 20 new third-party feed partners were added to Windows Live including Facebook, Digg, and SmugMug. MySpace will also be added in the coming months, so that MySpace customers can share activities and updates from MySpace to people in their Windows Live network.

By adding new feed partners to Windows Live, it’s easier for you to connect your activities various blogging sites, social networks and photo sharing sites and share them with your friends in your Windows Live network. This update will make it easier for the 500 Million users who are active on Windows live today to connect their activities on these partner sites and share them with their friends on Windows Live.

For instance, when you add the Facebook web activity – any photo, video, note or status update you make on Facebook will now appear on Windows Live via your What’s New feed. When you add Digg, any article you “digg” or submit to Digg, will now appear on Windows Live via your What’s New feed. Since Windows Live is global, it’s interesting to note that fourteen of the 20 new feed partners are headquartered in countries outside of the United States. According to Comscore, Hyves is the top social network in the Netherlands, and Metroflog is a top social network in Argentina.

There are quite a few partner web activities you can add today! Check them out by going to your Windows Live Profile and choosing “Web activities” in the lower left-hand corner of your profile

Add new contacts to Windows Live: MySpace, hi5, and Tagged join Facebook and LinkedIn as contact partners on Windows Live. Now you can exchange contacts between Windows Live and these five social networks and vice versa.

Messenger has come to Hotmail: Now you can IM through the web via Windows Live Hotmail. You can sign-in to Windows Live Messenger directly from within Hotmail and exchange IMs with your Messenger contacts.

If you are ever on a PC that doesn’t have Windows Live Messenger installed, just go to your Hotmail inbox and sign in to Messenger there to chat with your contacts. Once you sign-in, you can browse your contacts via your People page. If you are signed in to Messenger while checking your Hotmail and a contact sends you an IM, a toast will pop up in the lower right-hand corner of the page just as it does on a PC. For more details on Web IM in Windows Live Hotmail – see this blog post from Antonia on the Windows Live Team Blog.

Arrange your Photos in Windows Live SkyDrive: I blogged about this last week. Windows Live SkyDrive now allows you to arrange your photos in any order you want (thanks to Silverlight).

In one of your Photos folders on SkyDrive just click “Sort” and choose “Arrange photos”.

Photos of you: A new entry point has been added to Windows Live Profile pages called “Photos of you”. Essentially, this new link will take you to a page of photos tagged with a specific person (or yourself). It’s a great way to see all the photos your friends appear in or photos you appear in.

SkyDrive takes your Favorites: All your Favorites from favorites.live.com are now automatically moved to SkyDrive where you can use Windows Live Toolbar to sync your Favorites with Internet Explorer on your PCs.

And the Windows Live Sync website has now been integrated with the new Windows Live UI we launched with this last fall.

The new Windows Live Sync website makes a huge difference in managing your personal and shared folders and managing the PCs you are syncing them with.

Enjoy the improvements to Windows Live!

Vote for us on CNET’s 2009 Webware 100!

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:29:49 GMT

13 Microsoft Products have been nominated in CNET’s 2009 Webware 100 including several from Windows Live (Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live SkyDrive, Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh) and Internet Explorer 8.

My colleague Antonia over on the Windows Live Team Blog has all the details including links on where to cast your vote. Voting voting ends on April 30, 2009 (12pm Pacific Time) so vote now!

Day 1 of MIX09 Introduces Silverlight 3 And Other Tools for Advancing User Experiences

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:24:00 GMT

MIX09 kicks off today in Las Vegas and brings together web developers and designers to discuss how they can deliver a better experience through software and the Web. And we are making several announcements this week at MIX09 that will help web developers and designers easily create the best experiences with their websites and applications.

Today at MIX09 we introduced the next version of Silverlight – Silverlight 3. Silverlight 3 offers web developers more than 60 controls to take advantage of – making it easy for them to create cutting-edge Web applications. Silverlight 3 expands on high-quality and high-definition video experiences with true high-definition video in full-screen mode including stutter-free live and on-demand video. Silverlight 3 supports more video formats, including H.264, and hardware-based media acceleration. And Silverlight 3 also adds support for Windows Touch on Windows 7 (click here to view my blog post on enabling Windows Touch on supported PCs with the Windows 7 Beta)!

Download: Silverlight 3 Beta for Developers

The final release of Silverlight 3 is expected to ship later this year. For more information on Silverlight 3, check out the Silverlight Team’s brand new blog: The Silverlight Blog.

NBC Universal has announced that they have chosen Silverlight to deliver the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games on its official Web site NBCOlympics.com. They used Silverlight for the Beijing Games with great success.

For a perfect example of the power of Silverlight web applications – check out the brand new web client for the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope. You can browse the galaxy directly within your web browser! A comparison of features between the web client and desktop PC client of the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope software is available here.

Here on The Windows Blog, we utilize Silverlight for delivering video content to our readers. Our video content is hosted on Microsoft Videos and with their Silverlight Video Player we embed the video into our blog posts. We’re working with the folks at Microsoft Videos in doing something real neat with our video content (and it’s all in Silverlight) so stay tuned!

For the full press release of today’s announcements from Day 1 at MIX09 – click here. On top of the Silverlight 3 announcement, we also announced several new components of the Microsoft Web Platform which includes the Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta. And we also announced new capabilities for Windows Azure as well.

Tim Sneath is “live blogging” MIX09 so if you’re wanting to stay on top of all the latest MIX09 happenings, read his posts.

Also announced today is the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit. Web developers can use the toolkit to make it possible for people who use Windows Live Messenger to communicate and express themselves directly within their website. Essentially, a web developer can give you a pretty slick web IM experience using Windows Live Messenger on a website you are visiting.

Why would a web developer want to embed Windows Live Messenger IM functionality within their website? Visitors of a website with Windows Live Messenger functionality built in can IM with their contacts or even other visitors on the website. This creates a new level of engagement for visitors on that website.

For more information on the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, click here. UPDATE: Angus Logan blogs about the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit here and worth checking out.

We are looking at deploying the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit here on The Windows Blog for our readers.

Completing the Windows Experience with Windows Live

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:31:46 GMT

Back in October during PDC2008, I highlighted the Windows + Windows Live relationship. Specifically, I called out how Windows + Windows Live will complete the Windows PC experience with Windows Live Essentials. Now that people can experience the relationship first-hand with Windows Live Essentials today – I thought I’d re-approach and discuss the topic in a little more detail.

Today, users are increasingly expecting that their PC (and their OS) allow them to do things on their desktop that have an online component such as e-mail. This is where Windows Live Essentials comes in. For example, when you’re at home on your laptop you can use Windows Live Mail, but when you’re on the go you can access that same mail from any computer with an Internet connection by going to Windows Live Hotmail. Windows Live Essentials combines what you do on the PC with what you do on the Web. That’s the benefit of software + services.

Many of the Windows Live programs within Windows Live Essentials serve as a “bridge” to the Windows Live services:

With Windows Live Messenger, you can not only chat with your friends via IM, but also follow What’s New with them on Windows Live, which means you can stay on top of updates they make like new photos or blog entries.
With Windows Live Writer, you can publish new blog posts to Windows Live Spaces.
With Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can upload your photos to Windows Live Photos and share them with the people you choose.
With Windows Live Mail, you can sync your Windows Live Hotmail e-mail and calendar to your PC.

Windows Live Essentials extends beyond Windows Live as well. Windows Live Writer is capable of publishing blog posts to most major blogging services, not just Windows Live Spaces. As a matter a fact - I use Windows Live Writer to publish all my blog posts here on this blog, which is powered by Telligents’ Community Server. Windows Live Mail supports POP3 and IMAP allowing for multiple e-mail accounts from a variety of e-mail providers including Gmail. And Windows Live Photo Gallery supports custom plug-ins for uploading photos to a variety of photo sharing websites (check out this awesome plug-in for uploading photos to Facebook).

For Windows Live Essentials, we have introduced 3 programs as the successors to programs that were introduced in Windows Vista:

Windows Live Mail is the successor to Windows Mail
Windows Live Photo Gallery is the successor to Windows Photo Gallery
Windows Live Movie Maker is the successor to Windows Movie Maker

We made this change because we learned that many of the end-user experiences need to be updated more frequently. With Windows Live Essentials, we feel we are in a better position to innovate on these programs and enhance your experience as a PC user and at a much quicker rate - as they are outside of the Windows OS.

Windows Live Essentials doesn’t just consist of the above 3 programs, it also includes Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Toolbar, and Windows Live Family Safety adding significant value to PC users through its integrated and powerful features.

Windows Live Essentials today are free, key applications that make it easy to manage multiple e-mail accounts, edit and share photos, chat with IM for PC users and available today for you to download at download.live.com (available for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and the Windows 7 Beta).

In the coming weeks, I plan to dive deeper into many of these integrated and powerful features (many of which I use myself) that I that I hope you will enjoy.

Download the “I’m A PC” Messenger Theme Pack

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:52:30 GMT

To go with your Life Without Walls Wallpapers for your PC, you can now download the “I’m A PC” Windows Live Messenger Theme Pack that gives you a variety of Display Pictures and Backgrounds for your IM conversation window.

Click above to download the “I’m A PC” Messenger Theme Pack. I’ve got it installed on my PCs and it works just fine with the latest Windows Live Messenger Beta available for download at download.live.com.

Thanks to Paul Thurrott for the heads up!

Windows Live Beta Round-Up & Plug-ins for Windows Live Photo Gallery

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:19:00 GMT

Right now as I write this everyone should be enjoying the shiny new Windows Live Betas - available for download at download.live.com. I'd like to take a moment to highlight several blog posts from the Windows Live Product Teams I think folks will be interested in reading.

Tanja, Program Manager for Windows Live Mail, is back on the Windows Live Mail Blog talking about today's Windows Live Mail Beta release. We all know that Windows Live Mail is sporting calendar sync with Windows Live Calendar (currently in Beta at calendar.live.com) but Tanja sheds some light on some specific calendaring features such as the "Add to Calendar" button. When you're reading an email with important information about an event or related to an event all you need to do is click "Add to Calendar" and you can take that information within the email and turn it into an Event in one of your Calendars. She also discusses the Event window where you can set the event to reoccurring, set a start and stop time and more.

Speaking of Windows Live Calendar - tomorrow Thursday Sept. 18 starting around 3PM Pacific Time the Windows Live Calendar Beta will be down for a few hours while the service gets upgraded.

Aaron from the Windows Live Messenger Team posted on the Windows Live Messenger Blog and discusses their Beta release and the features within the new Beta release such as Favorites, Group IM, Personalization, and the What's New feed. Aaron also mentions that the Windows Live Messenger Beta also has the ability to sign in at multiple locations called MPOP (short for Multiple Points of Presence).

The Windows Live Writer Team published a very extensive list of changes and updates in their Beta release. You should definitely check it out if you're a heavy Windows Live Writer.

And the Windows Live Digital Memories Team has posted lists of new features and changes in both the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta and Windows Live Movie Maker Beta.

And Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta? Yup! Michael Palermiti, Program Manager for Windows Live Photo Gallery, has a blog post up on the Windows Live Dev Blog discussing new extensibility in the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta. Developers now have a framework to develop publishing plug-ins for Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Matter a fact, Omar Shahine has published a plug-in he created for publishing photos to SmugMug.

When folks create new plug-ins for Windows Live Photo Gallery, the Digital Memories Team will add the plug-ins to this page off their blog. Bookmark it now ;-)

Be sure to check out previous blog post on the Windows Live Betas and outlining what's new in each of the client applications.

Next Wave of Windows Live Introduced with New Betas

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:30:00 GMT

Want to check out what's next for Windows Live? Chris Jones, Corporate Vice President for Windows Live Experience Program Management, has announced today the availability of new Betas for the Windows Live client applications on the Windows Live Wire blog. These Betas showcase significant updates to the client applications in the Windows Live suite introducing the next wave of Windows Live products and services. Chris does a fantastic job explaining the term "wave" and how it's used to describe Windows Live releases. Definitely give his post a read as it discusses some background for Windows Live as it's progressed from 2006 to 2007 to today. Expect regular posts on the Windows Live Wire blog from members of the Windows Live Engineering Team discussing in greater detail specifics on the new stuff coming up for Windows Live.

To download the new Windows Live Betas - just head on over to download.live.com later today and install the betas.

When we talk about the Windows Live suite - we are talking about the following desktop client applications that sit on the user's PC that tap in to the Windows Live services in the "cloud" (the web). These applications are only part of the Windows Live story as they all connect in more than one way to the Windows Live web services. Windows Live represents what is called software + services where software is connected to services on the web. The follow applications are part of the Windows Live suite:

Windows Live Messenger
Windows Live Mail
Windows Live Writer
Windows Live Photo Gallery
Windows Live Movie Maker (NEW)
Windows Live Family Safety

Windows Live Movie Maker is brand new to the Windows Live suite in the next major wave of releases for Windows Live. But I'll talk more about Windows Live Movie Maker in a bit.

An example of how these client applications tap into the Windows Live services in the "cloud" is how the Windows Live client applications handle contacts. A single contacts storage service - called Windows Live Contacts - powers your Messenger contact list and Address Book in Windows Live Hotmail. Your Messenger contact list *is* your Windows Live Contacts. As Chris Jones said in his Windows Live Wire blog entry - these updated Windows Live client applications are "designed to work best when connected to our suite of web-based services". I've got one word for that - w00t!

Ok enough of the technicalities - let's take a look at what's new with the Windows Live client application betas. Keep in mind I'm only going to briefly cover some of these features as this post could get really long if I went in-depth. I'll dive deeper into specific features in later posts.

NOTE: Instead of putting "Beta" at the end of every product name everything here on out is related to the Windows Live Betas being released today and not the RTM Windows Live suite (aka the non-Beta Windows Live apps).

Let's start with Windows Live Messenger. Windows Live Messenger essentially was almost completely redesigned.

By default, the UI sports an all new lighter color scheme. You'll notice that the tabs in Messenger are no longer on the left-hand side. Instead, they now sit in a "Tab Bar" just above the video carousal or banner ad. The Tab Bar can be turned off. You can also have your What's New feed from Windows Live Spaces appear in Windows Live Messenger for you to keep track of what's happening with your friends in Windows Live. You can see the What's New feed on your Windows Live Spaces homepage today.

When you mouse over a contact, Windows Live Messenger now has a neat mouse-over menu that lets you choose a variety of options such as sending a text message to a contact's cell, calling that contact, or viewing their contact card.

TIP: For your most favorite contacts you can drag them to the Favorites category. I use the Favorites category in Messenger for contacts that I instant message with the most.

However one of the biggest changes to Windows Live Messenger is how you can personalize your Messenger experience. I was able to change the way my contact list looks which is great. I am also now able to choose a "scene" for the main window of Messenger. There are several scenes that come with Messenger I was able to choose from. I discovered you can also choose your own scene from photos you have on your PC as well. When I chose a scene - Messenger automatically changed the color of my Messenger windows to match the coloring in the scene I chose.

In the screenshot, you can see I chose one of the desktop wallpapers that came with Windows Vista (the one that is also the background here on the Windows Vista Team Blog). Now what is really neat about choosing a scene for Messenger is that it also changes how the Messenger window looks when you're chatting with a friend. Essentially you can truly change how your contacts "see" you. Because I changed my scene in Messenger to be the Windows Vista energy wallpaper - when I chat with someone on Messenger (who is also running the Beta) their Messenger window will reflect my scene. This is the conversation window I see when I initiate a conversation with the Windows Experience Blog. Take a look:

Windows Live Messenger also lets you choose a Signature Sound that plays for your contacts when you sign-in to Messenger.

There is more than just customization changes to Windows Live Messengers folks will notice with the Beta. Users can now create Groups where they can add up to 20 people for private group instant messaging. Users can now share photos directly within the conversation window which I found to be an excellent new feature.

I can choose multiple photos to share with a Messenger contact and go through the photos with them in the conversation window. Instead of sending photos one by one in Messenger - this is a much easier way share photos with friends. You can either press the "Photos" button in the top left-hand corner of the conversation window or drag and drop photos onto the chat box.

In Windows Live Mail - users will enjoy full calendar sync with Windows Live Calendar. I've been waiting for this feature for a long time and it's very exciting to finally see!

I was able to create new calendars and have them sync up in Windows Live Calendar and vice versa. Windows Live Mail will also import calendars from Windows Calendar in Windows Vista as well which will then also sync up to Windows Live Calendar if you've signed up for the Windows Live Calendar Beta at calendar.live.com.

TIP: In both Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mail - you'll notice that contacts display tile (or status "dot") will glow green if they are online, yellow is they are "Away", and red if they are "Busy". If a contact is offline - their status "dot" will be white or their display tile will be faded. The status icons and colors are going to be consistent across Windows Live.

Windows Live Photo Gallery expands on helping users manage their digital photo collections by offering several new features that make managing their photos a lot easier.

Windows Live Photo Gallery now has face-detection technology that helps find people within your photos. When I opened a photo of Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld from one of the new TV ads, Windows Live Photo Gallery detected two people in the photo. I was then able to add people tags to each of the people Windows Live Photo Gallery detected.

When a person is detected, all I needed to do was put my mouse over that person and a list of my Windows Live Contacts appeared. I can choose a person from my Windows Live Contacts or manually add a name. I certainly don't have Bill Gates or Jerry Seinfeld as Windows Live Contacts ;-)

TIP: If Windows Live Photo Gallery is unable to detect some faces, you can add them manually by clicking on "Add people tag". You can then draw a square over a face and choose a people tag for that person.

There are also new options for fixing your photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery in the Beta such as "Straighten photo" and "Black and White Effects".

If a photo is tilted in some awkward way, the "Straighten photo" tool lets you align the photo to fix that tilt. And sometimes you might want to create some old fashioned black and white photos but didn't shoot the photos in black and white - now you can quickly make them black and white in Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Just like with the last release - Windows Live Photo Gallery continues to let you upload your photos to either Windows Live Spaces or Flickr. But under the "Extras" menu you'll notice there is an option to "Create a Photosynth". Consider this like a quick shortcut to creating new Synths for Photosynth. If you have the Photosynth plugin installed on your system, you can jump into creating a Synth right from Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Windows Live Writer continues to be the best (and coolest) blog editing tool on the web.

New UI lets you switch via tabs at the bottom between blog post "edit", "preview", and HTML much more quickly - which is something I find extremely useful as I am always putting embed code in my blog posts and switching between edit and HTML is something I do quite often. Windows Live Writer now also supports being able to upload videos directly to online video services such as Soapbox on MSN Video and YouTube.

Windows Live Movie Maker is the newest addition to the Windows Live suite. This isn't simply Windows Movie Maker from Windows Vista re-branded. Windows Live Movie Maker was, like Windows Live Messenger, pretty much re-designed. Using the familiar Fluent user interface (as seen in Microsoft Office 2007) - or commonly referred to as the "ribbon" UI - Windows Live Movie Maker offers a brand new movie making and editing experience with the average consumer in mind.

Windows Live Movie Maker lets you add audio tracks and video effects to your videos.

Once you edit your videos using Windows Live Movie Maker you can upload those videos directly to Soapbox on MSN Video.

I use Windows Live Movie Maker today to bring in videos I take with my LifeCam VX-7000. I edit them and splice them together and then upload to Soapbox. The VX-7000 shoots some pretty good quality video for uploading to the web. Most webcams today consumers own can shoot some pretty decent video and what better than to use Windows Live Movie Maker to edit those videos and upload them to Soapbox for all to see?

It is important to understand that Windows Live Movie Maker Beta is in the early stage of testing and will of course continue to evolve. Part of getting the Beta in your hands today is getting feedback to shape the product.

And finally we have Windows Live Family Safety. Windows Live Family Safety offers an improved and simplified sign up process makes it easier to configure the service and manage your kids' activities online. Because I don't have kids myself and don't need this application, I don't have much experience with it to-date. But if you have a family, this application is something you should certainly check out especially when you're looking to keep your kids safe while being on the Internet.

Whew. This turned in to a very long post - one of my longest yet. There is some very exciting things happening with Windows Live so it deserves such a long post. I think I've outlined most of the biggest changes you can check out in the Windows Live Betas today. To leave feedback: head on over to the Windows Live Wire blog or go to feedback.live.com.

If there are any specifics within the Windows Live Betas you want to hear more about - let me know!

UPDATE: I've updated the screenshots so they are a bit of a higher quality.

Need a webcam? Try the Microsoft VX-7000 LifeCam

Brandon LeBlanc — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:18:00 GMT

Back in September, Nick blogged about two new LifeCams from Microsoft Hardware: the VX-7000 and NX-3000. Recently, I've been looking for a new webcam. I already owned the VX-3000 - but I wanted something a little more powerful and higher quality. And the VX-7000 is just that! I went ahead and picked one up last week and thought I'd share some notes on my experience with it so far.

First off, let me give you a brief introduction to the device. The VX-7000 is the top-of-the-line webcam in the VX series of LifeCams from Microsoft Hardware. The VX series LifeCams are designed for desktop PCs while the NX series LifeCams are designed for laptops. The VX-7000 is a Certified for Windows Vista device so it is designed to work great with Windows Vista. All LifeCams are optimized for Windows Live - specifically being used with Windows Live Messenger for video calls. The VX-7000 comes with a pretty slick set of specs (you can also read the specs here from the Microsoft Hardware site):

2.0 Megapixel Sensor for clear video
Built-in Microphone designed to capture crystal clear audio
Universal Attachment Base to fit on top and clamp on to most monitors
Auto-Adjustment for Low Light Conditions
71 degree Wide-angle Lens
High Definition 8 Megapixel still digital photographs

Both video and still photos are shot at 1600x1200 screen resolution which is really nice.

The VX-7000 (and all LifeCams) utilizes the Microsoft LifeCam client where you can take photos and videos using the camera. You can download the Microsoft LifeCam along with the drivers here.

But what the VX-7000 is perfect at, I found out, is doing video calls with contacts in Windows Live Messenger. I used Windows Live Messenger's Audio and Video wizard (under the Tools menu) to set the audio and video up with the VX-7000. I then initiated a video call with a friend of mine and within seconds my friend could hear and see me via my VX-7000 webcam. And the quality was pretty good!

As I mentioned above, you can use the Microsoft LifeCam client to record photos and videos using the VX-7000 (or any LifeCam). And with Windows Live Photo Gallery - you can upload those photos you take to your Windows Live Space (or Flickr). Did you also know that with Windows Live Photo Gallery you can upload videos to MSN Soapbox as well?

I was able to take several videos I shot with the VX-7000 and use Windows Live Photo Gallery to upload them to MSN Soapbox.

Overall though I've been really impressed with the quality of the VX-7000 in general and it should certainly be looked at if you're looking for a new webcam.