Microsoft has included Modern-style replacements for many of the Essentials applications in Windows 8 – email, calendaring, contacts, messaging, photo management, and cloud file storage are all built in. However, some Windows Live Essentials applications have no Modern equivalent, and you may want to the desktop versions of some applications.

Microsoft has come full-circle – after including many of the Windows Live Essentials apps in Windows Vista, they were removed in Windows 7 and available as a separate installer so that Windows 7 could be a more lightweight, minimal operating system. They’re now being integrated back into Windows 8 by default.