Windows Live Essentials is a suite of freeware applications by Microsoft that aims to offer integrated and bundled e-mail, instant messaging, photo-sharing, blog publishing, and security services. Essentials programs are designed to integrate well with each other, with Microsoft Windows, and with other Microsoft web-based services such as SkyDrive and Outlook.com, so that they operate as a seamless whole.

Windows Live "is a way to extend the Windows user experience". Windows Vista provides a link in its user interface to download Windows Live Messenger, and Windows 7 saw the removal of applications such as Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker and replaced with the Windows Essentials suite, a software package that allows the downloading and installation of similar offerings from Windows Live. Windows Live offers int...

“Windows Live is the former collective brand name for a set of services and software products from Microsoft; part of their software plus services platform. A majority of these services are Web applications, accessible from a browser, but there are also client-side binary applications that require installation. There are three ways in which Windows Live services are offered: Windows Essentials applications, web services, and mobile servi...”

Microsoft Family Safety is free parental monitoring and content-control software. Family Safety has a Windows Filtering Platform driver to filter web browsing. Parents can obtain a list of the websites visited. In addition, computer usages time, programs run, files downloaded, and games run will be reported via Windows Parental Controls. Parents are able to create "allow" lists for Windows Live Contacts services such as Windows Live Mes...