Want to try some of the latest technology? Want to be able to use it on a daily basis for free? Then, this toolbar is for you.

Some of you may be saying, "Oh no. Not another toolbar!" Yet this is one that you should try. It is part of Microsoft's new "Live" initiative and it has some features not found in any other toolbar. The first dramatic difference is called Smart Menus. After the toolbar is installed, you can highlight any word or phrase. Just wait for a second and a small icon will appear below the highlighted word(s). Click on that icon and you will get a variety of useful choices. You can search the Web or Web news for that word or phrase without retyping it. You can get a definition of the word. If the phrase you highlighted is an address or location, you can show a map or get the weather. If the word happens to be a company, you can get information and/or stock quotes. Where you would have normally had to go to another Web page like Mapquest or dictionary.com and retype or cut and paste the information, the Live toolbar puts everything at your fingertips.

With Windows Live Toolbar also has an anti-phishing component that will alert you to bogus websites. It has one button access to your Web mail like Gmail or Hotmail. As you would expect, Hotmail is built-in, and Gmail requires an add-on, but both work very well. There are a lot of other add-ons that you can find in the Live Toolbar Gallery, so that is a great place to visit after you download and install the toolbar. The Gallery has many mini-functions that you can add to the toolbar. There is everything from a Wikipedia link to games to translators, making this toolbar bar much more expandable than the Google toolbar.

The Live Toolbar also has some heavy-duty searching capabilities. It, of course, uses Microsoft Live search rather than Google, but that may be a good thing. You can keep your Google search bar and use Google in conjunction with the Live search. While I love Google, I find that sometimes looking at a different search engine is advantageous.

The Live Toolbar has a unique set of suggestions called "Search Suggestions" that are very useful. When you type a word or phrase, it gives you a drop-down of things that you might possibly be looking for. For instance, typing in "star" gave me a list of suggestions that included starbucks, star wars, star tribune, and star dock. It's a helpful little tool that can help jog your memory when you have a senior moment and can't come up with the complete search term.

The search capabilities of the Live Toolbar extend to Outlook. If you have Outlook and the Web search that Outlook uses installed on your computer, a Live Toolbar will also appear in Outlook. It is very useful for searching through email and appointments.

Windows Live Toolbar is a quick, easy, and free download for everyone who uses Internet Explorer (6.0 or newer). After you download it, remember to close Internet Explorer and reopen it to make the toolbar appear.

One thing to be aware of: During the installation, you are presented with a Windows Live Setup Page, as whown below.

Be sure to read that page carefully. You will probably want to uncheck the boxes that say "make Live.com my home page" and "Make Windows Live Search my default search engine in Internet Explorer". On the same page, you will also have a choice to make about giving your information to Microsoft or keeping it private. Click on the circle in front of "No, I don't want to participate" to avoid giving your information out. I suggest you to not give your information to Microsoft, but you can, if you like. Just so you don't think that Microsoft is the only one trying to get information in this way, the Google Toolbar has a similar choice about sharing information with Google.

The Live Toolbar a great free program to try. You can uninstall it if you don't like it with no harm done, but you may, like me, decide that it is a valuable addition to your arsenal of products that make Web surfing easier.