As many of you know, we’ve released a number of Beta builds since last April…and many of you were eager to install them and try out the latest features.  But, there are still a bunch of people out there who haven’t been upgrading their builds, and we wanted to make this process easier for them.  Part of the problem is just the barrier behind letting people know that an update was out there.  Up to this point, we’ve only really been able to inform customers about new builds through email invites, and blog and newsgroup posts.  But, with the build that’s going to be available in the next day or so – we’re going to change all that!

From now on, any new builds that are released for WLMd will also be available through Microsoft Update.  So, in the next couple days, everyone should see a notification letting them know that an update is available.  We’re hoping that with the addition of this feature, more and more of our customers will upgrade to newer builds so you can all see the amazing work this team has been doing on the product.  It also helps us out because the feedback that we receive from you will be more recent and will help us get a better understanding of the quality of the current builds. 

In addition to hooking up support for notifications on new builds for WLMd, this build also contains some changes in the contacts space.  There aren’t a whole lot of major updates here, but you might notice some improvements in stability and also a couple small bug fixes.

Just a few more quick comments…

• The update that you’ll be notified of in the next couple days will be an optional one – so you don’t have to upgrade if you don’t want to.  In the next couple weeks though, anybody who is running 1172 or higher will be required to go through a mandatory update to the latest build.
• The “Check for Updates” option in our Help menu should also be functional now.  This should take you to the Microsoft Update site where you’ll be able to see whether or not we’ve released anything new.
• This build will at first only be available through Microsoft Update, but in the next couple weeks we’ll be able to post it up to the ideas.live.com site as well.
• The only issue that we’re aware of at this time when upgrading through Microsoft Update is that you will lose the WLMd shortcut.  To get it back, just go to c:\program files\windows live mail desktop, right click on wlmail.exe and choose the “Create Shortcut” option.

Even though we’re only aware of the issue above, this doesn’t mean that it’s the only issue out there!  Please try the new update feature out and let us know if you run into any problems.  The Connect database is still open to everyone – so keep the data flowing in!

That’s about it for now…  Have fun with the new build!

--tanja