Windows Live Favorites review

If you're an information junkie, you might easily lose track of cool Web sites. Sure, you might bookmark items of interest while surfing the Web, but then how do you find those pages later from among the long list you've stashed within your browser? Windows Live Favorites remotely stores your Web bookmarks so that you can access and organize them from Internet Explorer and Firefox wherever you go. This service is similar to Del.icio.us, which Yahoo owns, but with less emphasis on sharing content with fellow users.

Just visit favorites.live.com and sign in with a Windows Live (formerly Passport) ID to get started adding Favorites. You can add one bookmark at a time and describe it with a subject tag. Search your favorites later to scour through the tags, the Web site names, and the URLs. If you import Favorites from Firefox or Bookmarks from IE, Windows Live Favorites translates your folders into tags and folder names, and it won't duplicate pages that you may have saved in the same place. Unfortunately, since it left beta testing, Favorites removed its one-step Del.icio.us import feature, although, of course, you can migrate content by exporting from Del.icio.us first.

Windows Live Favorites can store 2MB worth of content, less than rival Del.icio.us's 5MB (about 1,500 items). You can drag a bookmarklet to IE to instantly add sites to Favorites without leaving the window. And if you'd like Internet Explorer and Favorites to synchronize their updates, the Windows Live Toolbar does the trick--but for IE only.

Whether the plain-Jane layout of Del.icio.us or the more graphical Windows Live Favorites works better is a matter of your personal style. Del.icio.us may load faster on a slow Internet connection, but Windows Live Favorites can display more information on the page and spare you mouse clicks. Just click the arrow next to a bookmark name, and that Web site appears within a new pane that keeps you on the Windows Live Favorites page. You can grab the edges of each pane to resize them. By contrast, you'll have to exit the Del.icio.us site whenever you click a bookmarked URL. Plus, you can sort Windows Live Favorites items by title, tags, sharing, and URL; right-click a bookmark to change those settings. You also can select and delete a bunch of favorites at once. Favorites' folders should be simple to grasp for Microsoft Windows users. By contrast, Del.icio.us's lack of folders and reliance upon tagging might bewilder newbies. And luckily, Favorites is ad-free.