Catch 22 with Windows Live from Nokia A downloading mission impossible
by Tony Dennis
Mobile Software Insight has been struggling for over a day to work out some way of downloading the result of co-operation between Nokia and its arch rival, Microsoft. The pair have decided to offer a suite of applications –
Windows Live services - to those who already possess certain specific Series 60 handsets. The full list of supported handsets can be found here …
www.nokia.com/windowslive. The software is currently made available to ordinary fold in 11 counties one of which is the UK but the USA hasn't made the list.
The download comprises of two halves: Mail and Internet plus Live Spaces. There's four individual modules involved: - Windows Live Hotmail; Windows Live Messenger: Windows Live Contacts; and Windows Live Spaces. So how is the ordinary mobile enthusiast supposed to get his or her hands on this free software?
The first catch is that you need to have a standard bit of Nokia software installed on your phone. It's called 'Download' and uses the same icon as 'App mgr'. Here's where Catch 22 first kicks in. This module could be found on a standard Orange UK N95 in the applications folder. But it is very definitely missing from a Nokia N73 supplied by 3 UK.
The next catch is that you need to have the very latest list of available software visible when you load the 'Download' app. The easiest way to do this is to select 'Options' and pick 'Refresh list'. You should then see an icon labelled 'WinLive'. Except on the Orange handset you see a whole bunch of options but none of them are the fabled 'WinLive' icon. You can try forcing the handset to update this list via a Wi-Fi connexion rather than GPRS/3G. But once again in our case, the Orange supplied handset showed plenty of offerings but none of them were 'WinLive'.
So we switched out attention away from the N95 over to the N73. More fun and games. Nokia's web site warns you that you should update the N73's OS software if the version is younger than V 3.0638.0.01. So that meant going through a very lengthy process of connecting the handset up to a PC via a USB cable. First you need to download the Nokia software updater app. Then you can hook the handset up and download the latest version of the OS. Interestingly the downloader tells you to plug the handset into a power adapter just to be on the safe side.
Unfortunately even when you loaded the very latest version of the OS, an N73 from 3 still doesn't posses the Nokia Download app. So the obvious thing to do is to try to do it manually by going to the precise page on the Nokia web site where the software is load. In theory it is this …
http://europe.nokia.com/A4491268. Sadly the browser reports that this page isn't available and you're back to Square One.
We assume that between Nokia and Microsoft they'll dream up a way that ordinary people can download this software but at presently such an ability looks extremely haphazard.
The really annoying part to this whole sorry saga is that we wanted to download the software so that the system will inform us how much an ordinary person has to pay to use Windows Live Messenger after the initial 30 day free trail expires.
