Microsoft's decision to strip out certain capabilities from Windows and make them available separately as a free downloadable application suite called Windows Live Essentials remains controversial. Indeed, the original justification for doing so--Microsoft says it can update the Essentials applications more quickly if they're not part of the titanic Windows infrastructure--has not been borne out by reality. The company expects to ship the new version of Windows Live Essentials, the internally named "wave 4" release, by the end of 2010, well over a year and a half after the wave 3 release. That's not exactly timely.