[This entry is the first in my series of covering Windows Live products and services]

If you use e-mail to send photos to family and friends, then you should use Windows Live Mail to do it.  Windows Live Mail gives several notable improvements over the normal experience of e-mailing photos:

• You can set the size of the photo attachment at upload time.
• You can add fun borders and enhancements to the photos.
• Recipients can click through to see a slide show of attached photos.

The following sections elaborate on these points.

Setting the size of the photo at upload time

Have you ever received (or sent) a photo by e-mail, only to realize that the photo attachment was ridiculously large?  Large photo attachments take a long time to download, take up mailbox space, and can be difficult to view in an Internet browser window.  Proper netiquette says not to e-mail large photo attachments.

Unfortunately, resizing photos for e-mail can be a time-consuming process.  I used to have to open a separate program just to set my photos to an e-mail friendly size.  Sometimes, despite my best intentions, I forgot to do so.

No longer!  With Windows Live Mail, resizing is a snap.  When you are adding photos, the toolbar allows you to set the upload size for all of the photos.  One click and you've set the upload size.  The toolbar also shows the total upload size so that you can make sure that the e-mail message is not too large.  It even gives an estimate of how long the upload will take.

This process allows you to send photos that are appropriately sized.  Normally this resizing means that the photos are no longer print-quality.  But Windows Live Mail works behind the scenes to make sure that recipients can still access a high-resolution copy of your sent photo.  Here's what happens.  At the same time that Windows Live Mail attaches the small version of your photo to the e-mail, it also uploads the full-size version to Microsoft servers.  In the body of the e-mail, Windows Live Mail places hyperlinks around the smaller images.  These hyperlinks point to the full-size versions.  A simple click allows the recipient to download the full-size version of the photo.

Adding borders and enhancements to photos

My wife loves this one.  Why e-mail just a normal, squared-off photo when you could give it a fun border or some shading?  There are 7 varieties of enhancements to choose from.

Simply select your photo and then click on the enhancement to apply.  Instead of a plain photo, recipients will see the picture with a custom border.  These borders really up the "cute" factor of the images that you share.

Photo slide shows

When friends and family receive your e-mail, they can view the small images directly in the e-mail.  The e-mail will also contain a link to view a slide show of all of the photos.

Clicking on that link takes the viewer to an online slide show of the high-resolution images.  Any enhancements will not appear in the slide show.  This slide show is an easy way to view all of the photos without having to download all of the high-resolution images first.

Getting Windows Live Mail

After hearing all of these benefits, how can you get Windows Live Mail?  It's free!  You can download it from http://get.live.com/WL/config_all, just make sure that you check the "Mail" box, and you're ready to download the installer.

Installing and configuring Windows Live Mail

After downloading the installer, you simply need to run it and Windows Live Mail will be installed on your computer.  Since Windows Live Mail is just a program, it will work with your existing e-mail address.

After installation, run the Windows Live Mail program.  During this first run, it will prompt you to give it information about your e-mail provider.  For popular providers like Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and GMail, you just need to enter your e-mail address and password and you're ready to go.  If you have another e-mail provider, you can always configure the connection settings manually.  Since each e-mail provider is different, I won't go into any more details here.  You can always leave a comment if you have any questions.

After configuring Windows Live Mail for your specific e-mail provider, you should be ready to go!  You can use Windows Live Mail to send messages and photos from your existing e-mail address.  If you like, you can continue to send e-mail however you did it before installing Windows Live Mail and just use Windows Live Mail for these photo e-mails.

I hope that you enjoy using Windows Live Mail to stay in touch with family, friends, and the people you care about.  Please feel free to comment with any questions or observations.