After a trickle of updates and beta versions bearing the Windows Live moniker, Microsoft is ready to start promoting its official package of free desktop programs for e-mail, instant messaging, blogging and sharing photos.
"The programs are essentially a free upgrade for Windows," said Brian hall, general manager of Windows Live at Microsoft.
The package includes Windows Live Mail, which can grab messages from multiple free Web-based e-mail accounts, including Microsoft's Hotmail, Google's Gmail and AOL e-mail, The new package allows PC users to read and respond to mail even when they're not online, just as Outlook Express, which Microsoft has phased out, did.
Its Windows Live Photo Gallery lets users manipulate and organise digital photos and upload them to Flickr, a photo-sharing site owned by Yahoo, and to Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft's own blogging and social networking site.
The package also includes Live Writer, for writing blog posts, the Live Messenger instantmessaging program and Live Family Safety, parental controls for Web access at home.
The applications aren't much different from test versions previously available.
What's new is the spotlight Microsoft plans to shine on the programs.
Hall said the company has planned "one of the largest online advertising campaigns at Microsoft", with plans for 10 billion Web advertising impressions on Microsoft's MSN sites and third-party sites, including the social networking site Facebook, in which Microsoft bought a 1.6-per-cent stake last month.
Microsoft's Windows group will be marketing Windows Live alongside its latest Vista operating system during the crucial holiday shopping season.
Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, said this marketing push is indicative of divisions within Microsoft, between the old guard running the MSN online business and the Windows Live group.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sony plans to launch lighter Play Station 2
Sony announced plans to start selling a new, lighter version of its PlayStation 2 video game console just in time for the crucial end-of-year shopping season.
The newly designed PlayStation 2 will hit stores in Japan on November 22 with a recommended price tag of 16,000 yen (Bt4,830 dollars), Sony Computer Entertainment Japan said in a statement.
"While inheriting the functions of the current PlayStation 2, the internal design architecture of the new system has been completely overhauled, resulting in a console that is lighter in weight," it said.
The launch comes as the PlayStation 3, the successor to the PS2, battles fierce competition from Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Nintendo's Famicom faces end of road
It could soon be game over for the Famicom, the vintage family computer that two decades ago set Japan's Nintendo on a path to become a global video game icon.
Nintendo has decided to stop repairing the Famicom, the console that wowed the world with "Super Mario Brothers" and "Dragon Quest", because stocks of spare parts are running out, company spokesman Ken Toyoda said.
The family computer, which was sold as the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States and Europe, made its world debut in Japan in 1983.
Boasting far superior graphics to any other home video game console on the market at that time, it went on to sell almost 62 million units worldwide, and was followed by the Super Famicom, repairs of which will also be halted. "Some say it's sad Famicom is leaving and players are nostalgic, but Nintendo's saga has not ended. We want people to enjoy the Wii now," said the spokesman for the Kyoto-based firm, which began in 1889 making playing cards.
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