Smart Menus is “useful” – CNET Reviews Windows Live Toolbar!

CNET reviewed Windows Live Toolbar today. Here’s what they had to say about Smart Menus:

Windows Live Toolbar 3’s tiny contextual Smart Menus pop up when you highlight text on a Web page and bring you more details without leaving the page. Highlight a company name, and the Smart Menus can display stock quotes. Highlight an address, and Smart Menus will open a tiny map or a weather forecast for that location. These menus can be quite useful, and they’re small enough to ignore, but we understand how they might drive some people batty. A similar feature from the Yahoo Toolbar irked us before we knew what it did.

Woot! They found it useful! Just like me! What a happy coincidence!
(By the way, if this drives you batty… you can turn off the feature entirely in options. You can also turn of individual buttons if you want! Hurray for choice!)

Another positive review from Farshid:

.farshid sedghi. » Windows Live Toolbar – Highlighting Makes Life Easier

Today I came across Windows Live Toolbar and so far I have discovered a couple of really useful features with it. To demo something I have been wishing for a long time is highlighting an address and getting a map rather than cut and pasting it into one of the map sites.

Ahh… this is one of the reasons I love working on consumer products: I just know that this is going to make a difference in people’s lives. Hopefully a positive difference!
But while basking in the glow of a positive review, one must also take the lumps. Here’s a nit that CNET found:

The download of Windows Live Toolbar 3 was nearly instantaneous in our tests, but during the otherwise quick installation, we weren’t sure whether to install the Standard, Custom, or Advanced modes. We chose Standard, which accepts Microsoft’s suggested content, but when we changed our minds, we couldn’t go back to pick Custom, nor could we cancel installation without causing it to install the Toolbar with its default settings.

This was actually redesigned from the Beta version from earlier this year – based on feedback from the Beta. I’ll have to blog about this one day. Thanks for the feedback – I guess I’ll have to think about this some more in a future release.

I can’t wait to see what other people have to say about Toolbar 3.0!