I have long been a Microsoft fan (yeah, beat me up for that but I am…), but I’ve never liked MSN or Hotmail very much. In fact, I haven’t liked them at all. Until about a month ago, I used Outlook and only Outlook for my email because no web-based mail really got me very interested, and I’ve used Bloglines as my RSS aggregator.
Because Internet Explorer didn’t have a way to build in the Bloglines notifier well (it has a kludgy little system tray thingie that pops up all the time with stupid noises to notify of new feeds…YECH), I switched to Firefox about six months ago. I love Firefox. It’s pretty and it’s fast and it’s got terrific add-ons, including one to notify me of new feeds in the bottom of my browser window with a small icon instead of noisy popups. But in my heart, I wished that Microsoft would have come up with something pretty and fast and with great add-ons, too. They’re way behind in the browser battles, I think.
For the last month I’ve been taking GMail and Google Desktop for a spin. I love GMail. Just love it. Love the threading, linking, and that it doesn’t feel like WebMail (read SLOW and KLUDGY), love that I can forward mail from all of my email addresses to gMail and have everything in one place, organized nice and neat from whatever computer I am on at the time. I used to set up Outlook on one computer to leave mail on the server and then pull it off the server on my main computer, so that I had all of it in one place. The problem was that when I did that, I couldn’t get to some of my archived mail unless I was sitting in front of my main computer. GMail has solved that issue for me. I’m enjoying Google Desktop as well — I really like the sidebar view with my email, feeds (webclips), scratch pad, photos and all sorts of stuff at my fingertips. I like that I can minimize it, too. But I HATE that any link I click launches in IE instead of Firefox. I cannot figure out how to change that!
So today I was catching up with my feeds after a really long day and got to Robert Scoble’s blog about Microsoft’s new services — Live.com and the very cool Microsoft Gadgets site.
From the little bit that I’ve played with the Gadgets and Live sites, they are really cool. They’re the kind of cool that got me all excited about Microsoft products in the beginning and has kept me loyal to them. I haven’t really looked at the email feature yet — I signed up for the Beta but never heard anything on it (hey Microsoft, I LIKE being a beta tester for you — loved testing Office 2003!!!!)
I’m not a techie pro, just a real heavy-duty power user. I spend over 10 hours a day in front of a computer and like for it to work the way I want it to work. When something doesn’t work or isn’t as useful, I switch to something that is — like the Google stuff. But in my heart, I really like Microsoft and was wishing they would come up with something fun and fresh. I think they’re going there with these new sites. Of course, they don’t work in FIREFOX (sigh), but I’m going to trust their promise that they will.
Update: Live.com now works with Firefox. There’s still stuff I’m hoping they’ll work on, but it has some great potential. It’s definitely a step in the right direction.
Technorati Tags: live.com, scoble, scobleizer
