Windows Live Spaces Review

In my quest to save some money, I ditched my $120 a year hosting provider in exchange for a free site.  The trouble was, there weren't any free sites out there that did everything I wanted.  Finally I found Windows Live Spaces and I'm satisfied with the results, even if I do wish they would make a few improvements.

Windows Live Spaces is where you can make your own "space" on the web.  It is free, so don't expect miracles.  This free site does allow you to add photos, add a blog and add custom parts too.  You only get one page so you have to make the things fit however you can.

I just wanted to share photos and my blog.  The main reason I want a website is so my family could have easy secure access to my private photos AND I could link my blog up there too.  Windows Live Spaces offers both of these features, but overall the blog is too simplified for my needs.  You can't even change the date of your blog posts and you can't do much customization within the post.  Luckily you can add a part to your space that shows the RSS feed from another blog, so I keep my blog on wordpress and just put the RSS feed on my Windows Live Space.  The photo feature allows me to select that only certain friends can view my photos, and I still make some public.

The Photo function has just improved 10 fold.  When I joined a few months ago, they were shrinking all my photos to 1600 px and that is fine for viewing but not if my family wants to print.  They also only allowed 30 new uploads a month.  Then suddenly this month they changed it all and I couldn't be happier!  Photos are now uploaded in their full original size for my friends and family to download.  I also have 25GB of space!  If each of my full size photos is around 2 MB, that means I could add 100 pictures a month for 10 years* before I hit my limit!  And by then I bet they increase the limit again as that has been my experience with other sites.  In addition, I can now tag people and I have more organization options. 

The main reason I choose this is because my family and friends all use hotmail.  If you have a hotmail account, you already have access to live spaces.  This way my friends and family did not need to get a username/pass in order to access my private photos because they already have one.  I added them all as my Spaces Friends, and now for each album I want private I just checkmark the option to only show it to my Spaces Friends.

Finally, it's Free!  What more could you want.  Although the blog feature is lacking and some of the additional lists they let me add are boring, the fact is it is free.  The photo feature makes it all worth it and it really helps that everyone I want to share photos with already has an MSN/hotmail account to view them.  Check out this site today or visit www.vivasuzi.com to see my space.  Enjoy!!

*1 GB = 1024 MB; 25 GB = 25,600 MB.  25600 MB / 2 MB (usual photo size) = 12800 Photos.  12800 Photos/100 per month = 128 Months.  128 Months / 12 = 10 years!!