Francisco Garcia has some news today from internal information about Windows Live Essentials 2011 about the new features of the Essentials suite. There is a long list of features on his site, with part 2 still to come, but I thought I would share with you the best bits about the applications in the suite.

Photo Gallery and Movie Maker

• Facial Recognition
  Facial Recognition technology allows Photo Gallery to find pictures that have
  people in them and deduce who is in those pictures based on whom you’ve
  tagged in the past. The more you tag, the smarter it gets! Tags made in Photo
  Gallery travel with the photo wherever it goes, and any tags you or your friends
  make on sites such as Facebook also sync back down to your Photo Gallery.
• Photo Fuse
  Allows you to take the best parts of multiple photos to combine them into one
  “perfect” photo with an easy-to-use editing tool.
• Retouch
  Whether it’s a blemish, scratch, bruise or stain, Photo Gallery’s Retouch feature
  enables you to make it look like it never happened, employing the same
  technology that professional agencies use to polish photos.

Mail

• Efficient inbox management tools
  Tools such as conversation threading give you the convenience of viewing your
  messages in the way that you choose. Quick views organize and find selected
  types of mail (unread mail from contacts only, flagged email, all mail across
  inboxes, etc.) across your email accounts, newsgroups and feeds.
• Slim Cal
  Instantly view your calendar without navigating away from the context
  of your inbox.
• Photo email
  Send photos in email without worrying about size restrictions. Add captions and
  layouts and edit your photos from within Windows Live Mail.

Sync

With Windows Live Sync, your photos, movies, music and other files are synchronized
across your PCs, and they automatically remain updated with the latest changes so you
have access to your most current stuff when you need it. Set up Remote Desktop through
Windows Live Sync and you can access your PC when you’re away from it, from any
internet-enabled computer.

And with Sync, you can share settings for your favorite programs across your PCs, so
programs work the same way on every PC in your home.

• Sync folders across all your PCs (and Macs)
  Windows Live Sync keeps your files and folders, such as Documents, Pictures and
  Music, in sync across your computers so you can work or play wherever you want.
  Update a file on one computer, and it will automatically sync to the rest. Once
  your folders are synchronized, your files are available even when you don’t have
  internet access.
• Remote Desktop
  Leave your PC online and you can access it from devices.live.com. Find your PC
  among the list of devices on the website, and click Connect to remotely control
  your PC.

I am very excited to hear more about Essentials, the final piece in the Windows Live Wave 4 puzzle and to read that Sync is just like Live Mesh is very encouraging; incidentally http://devices.live.com/ currently redirects to SkyDrive.

Thanks for the info Francisco and I look forward to part 2.