Why does Windows Live Mail 2011 need two running services all the time?

A big annoyer that wasn't present in the previous versions:

Since I've installed WLM 2011, two background services are running all the time, "Microsoft® Windows Live ID Service" and "Microsoft® Windows Live ID Service Monitor".

I have only installed the Windows Live Mail component, no messenger or any other stuff, why are these two needed at all?

When I deactivate the "Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant", WLM 2011 quits always with some cryptic error message when I try to run it.

Two services for some e-mail client is pretty lame.

Exactly my very same complain!!

I cannot fathom why I on earth  WL apps authentication requires not 1 but 2 additional process running all the time.

I'm sure they are going to say that the process super light that doesn't mess with anything and so on.  But they will be totally missing the point.  2 process for that is a waste end of story

My life and my enjoyment of software improved so drastically the moment I decided to stop checking the CPU use, running processes, services etc. of every piece of software I ran. It's amazing.

@Bas: lol, great point. WLM needs two services because that's how they designed it. End of story.

@Bas:That's just not going to happen, but I've found that if you install the cpu usage, network meter, drives meter and gpu meter, you only need to run Resource Monitor a few times a day

WLM 2011's performance in general is pretty poor I've found, and I have it deployed on 4 systems I use regularly, and with a relatively small mailbox (<100MB).  It's really my only complaint with the app, it just needs far too many resources for a relatively simple mail client.

Starting it up for the first time after a while and it just slams the HD, and remains totally unresponsive (and sometimes kills the response of other tasks) until it gets new mail.  It's nuts.  Outlook is actually far more responsive even though my Outlook profile has a nearly 2GB OST.

@NitzWalsh: I turn off Outlook pretty often on my Machine at work. I managed to get 8 gig of RAM for about £60, coupled with the 6 that came in the machine, I never look at running procesess...evah!

I still am tentative about getting a SSD but memory is quite cheap nowadays - I remenber paying nearly twice as much for 2 gig on my last computer - if you get a 64bit machine, then all is fine and dandy

1 day ago,Bas wrote

My life and my enjoyment of software improved so drastically the moment I decided to stop checking the CPU use, running processes, services etc. of every piece of software I ran. It's amazing.

There's a difference between that and when software is perceived to be doing something that it shouldn't be.

If a software seems to be doing things that traditionally they haven't (yet adds no functionality that would seem to require it) then it calls into question the quality of the software and makes us re-assess our buying/usage descisions.

Mail clients are fundamentally the same as they were in the late-1990s. Of course we expect modern features, like HTML view, spam filters, indexed search, RFC compliance, a viewing pane; and we wouldn't be too surprised (albiet, disappointed) to see features removed, like Usenet and HTML mail "stationary".

Mail clients really shouldn't be using more memory, CPU, and IO than they were in more resource-constrained days, with exceptions for aggressive caching and indexing of messages for performance reasons, anything else is unacceptable.

Remember that Microsoft has been known to outsource first-party software titles out to other companies, and this often results in poor software quality, such as Microsoft MapPoint 2007, or the awful official WLMessenger client for Android (compare with the beautifully designed WLMessenger app for iPhone).

Software/usability quality is important. No-one likes it when iTunes takes up to 5 seconds to open a context menu or perform an action, for example, and often these problems have their root in inefficient design (hello IPC).

I'd like to mention that I'm using WL Essentials 2009 on Windows 7 (and Outlook Express 6 on my XPx64 desktop) and I'm perfectly happy with the situation. WLM2009 will be supported on XP until at least 2014 so I won't have to suffer from pervasive Facebook integration for a while

@W3bbo: Facebook? Pervasive? Are you talking about WL Essentials 2011? Once you collapse the UI down to the compact mode it's pretty much like 2009. I haven't seen one social networking feature rear it's head yet.

9 minutes ago,kettch wrote

@W3bbo: Facebook? Pervasive? Are you talking about WL Essentials 2011? Once you collapse the UI down to the compact mode it's pretty much like 2009. I haven't seen one social networking feature rear it's head yet.

I'm also not keen on the not-quite-WPF UI.

1 hour ago,W3bbo wrote

*snip*

There's a difference between that and when software is perceived to be doing something that it shouldn't be.

Yeah. There's also the practice of being perfectly happy with a piece of software until you obsessively check CPU load and running processes, after which you "feel" that it's performing poorly because you saw a service you didn't understand.

I check running processes immediately when I see a window flash, a sudden freeze, or a redirect to a dodgy website just to weed out "haha.exe" and its relatives.

2 days ago,NitzWalsh wrote

WLM 2011's performance in general is pretty poor I've found, and I have it deployed on 4 systems I use regularly, and with a relatively small mailbox (<100MB).  It's really my only complaint with the app, it just needs far too many resources for a relatively simple mail client.

Starting it up for the first time after a while and it just slams the HD, and remains totally unresponsive (and sometimes kills the response of other tasks) until it gets new mail.  It's nuts.  Outlook is actually far more responsive even though my Outlook profile has a nearly 2GB OST.

+1 - It's driving me round the bend. I'm very close to switching to an alternative (probably Thunderbird or Opera mail). Which is a shame because I really like the feature set of WLM. The cloud based contacts that save me having to back up and transfer them between machines in particular makes my life very easy. And the fact that it grabs email addresses from fb means I can email friends who I've not emailed before with the same ease as someone I'd email every day.

But performance is awful. Freezing, and occasional crashes, are commonplace. I sometimes have a bug where I'm unnable to open any messages and have to restart wlm several times to get rid of it. And it's just so laggy. Yet I get the feeling that if it could work without lagging and freezing the animations etc. would make it feel very smooth and aesthetically pleasent to use.

@GoddersUK: It can take a while to start up, but once it's running, I find WLM 2011 to be solid and fast. I wish it didn't open Messenger when opening, but I'm sure there's a setting for that that I can't find.

@spivonious: The setting is in Messenge Options. I scarecly use Skype or Messenger unless I am working remotely and use WLM2011 heavily and Messenger never starts on my machine

3 hours ago,spivonious wrote

@GoddersUK: It can take a while to start up, but once it's running, I find WLM 2011 to be solid and fast. I wish it didn't open Messenger when opening, but I'm sure there's a setting for that that I can't find.

Well, yes - but you could say the same for Outlook as well in terms of "once it starts up and stops churning, it's ok", or almost any app.

Of course after it's shown you the WLM logo, then shows your inbox, then responds for a second, then stops responding as it grinds the disk and downloads mail - these are all very simple, quick tasks that should not reduce a 4GB dual core system to a single-tasking machine while they go on.  Or hell, even an Atom netbook.

I don't keep my mail client open all the time, so it's frequently launching when I click hyperlinks and such.  After its cached and recently launched, its fine - but leave it alone for a few hours or just after bootup/hibernation, it's brutal.  Applications much, much larger and more complex can launch quicker.

Really hope performance improvements are on tap for Live 2012/13.