Feedback: Windows Live Desktop Beta

I'm not certain if this is the correct newsgroup to file these comments in.
It seems that MS has released a beta version of software but neglected to
provide a central place or newsgroup for beta-testers to give feedback and
report bugs. Go figure.

My initial reaction to Windows Life Desktop Beta (WLDB) is that I'm not
impressed at all.

First of all, when designing software (or any other product) one has to ask
"what's in it for the end-user?" With WLDB, I don't see much for me as an
end-user. The main difference between WLDB and OE6 looks to be a new GUI,
and that's about it. And is the new GUI an improvement? No way. It's more
cluttered, and now I have to read ads on the right pane of the window. In
exchange for the ads, what do I get? Nothing. And it's not like MS is some
poor software company that is looking to compensate itself for its efforts
at designing the software through third-party ads.

With WLDB, I am forced to sign-in with a Live.com (or Passport.net) account.
While it's true that I do not have to sign-up to Hotmail and can register an
existing email as my Live.com/Passport.net ID, I still have to "log-on" with
the ID to access the client.

There doesn't seem to be any way to tune the junk-mail filter. I can either
turn it on or off. And I can't quite figure out why on some accounts I can
designate/report mail as junk, while on others I cannot. Using my Yahoo
account on WLDB is kind of strange. There, I can designate emails as
"not-junk" when they are in the junk mail folder, but there's no way to
designate mail sitting in my inbox as "junk".

Those of us that use several email and news accounts will find the left pane
very long and there doesn't seem to be a way to collapse all of the accounts
down to make it more compact.

But by far the worst part of WLDB, in my opinion, is the integration with
Windows Messenger for address books. Gone is the separate address book. I'm
now obligated to use Window Messenger if I want to maintain an address book
to work with the email client. I don't like being forced into opening one
application just to use another. And I don't like having to run Messenger
just to look up and work with an address.

So at the end of the day, I suspect that I'll either continue to use OE6,
which works just fine for me, or, I'll finally decide to make the permanent
move over to Mozilla Thunderbird, which does everything that WLDB and OE6
do, but much better. I just can't help thinking that someone at MS forgot
to sit down with the design group and remind them that in the end, it's all
about improving the experience for the customer, because WLDB seems to all
about improving things for MS and not the end-user.