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Microsoft Ties Windows Live Services to OS
narramissic writes "Microsoft is tying its Windows Live services directly to Vista — a move that should sound vaguely familiar, as it is precisely what the company did to make IE ubiquitous among Internet users. 'A new unified installer for Windows Live services will help users download Wednesday's updates of photo-sharing, mail, instant messaging, online safety and other services, the company said on its Windows Live Wire blog. The new installer also will automatically update those services on Windows Vista and XP going forward.'"
The problem with Internet Explorer was bundling with the Operating System (not that it was a technically bad thing to do).
In this case, it's a web download. Big deal. And it probably saves time for those who use all of MSN's services and needs to install/update them. Doesn't Google do this already with Google Pack (including the auto-update) ?
Go somewhere random
I've been using Hotmail since '99, before M$ bought them out. After that, Hotmail (like other M$ products) became slower and more bloated with every "update". Now they can't(or don't want to because of backroom deals) filter out junk mail which goes directly into my inbox because spammers are spoofing my own e-mail address( how irritating )! Then there's the constant "legit" M$ spam which gets into my inbox at least 3-4 times a week no matter what my filter settings are. Fuck that. My primary account is now a Gmail one.
It was a lot better than ICQ or AIM, which were the other big two. ICQ started really going down hill especially when spammers started to figure it out. I pretty much stopped using it in late 1998/early 1999. AIM is, well, AOL. While I've not doubt the packaging helped it, I think it was also that you were getting ICQ expats looking for something new that didn't bite. MSN may not have been perfect, but it was the best I found.
I think you may have hit the nail on the head when you say "updates". Remember, "Microsoft Update" has the ability to pull updates for other, already installed Microsoft apps, not just Windows. Chances are, your server pulled them because Microsoft made these updates available for already installed clients. Try actually doing those updates on a naked-install of Windows and see what happens. Then post screenshots!