Windows Live Essentials represents a pretty major shift in the way Microsoft thinks about the cloud. So it’s no surprise that Microsoft and Dell have partnered to pre-load new systems with the Windows Live Essentials 2011 cloud-connected desktop application suite. Here’s the scoop.

The VAR Guy’s sister site MSPmentor laid out the idea behind the free Windows Live Essentials 2011 here, but the gist is that it’s a suite of applications for Windows 7 that integrate with popular online services like YouTube, Gmail, and Facebook. It’s notable because it’s not every day that Microsoft enables a product to work with competing services.

For Dell’s part, they’re partnering with Microsoft to put Windows Live Essentials 2011 on as many consumer machines in their repertoire as possible, as well as the Vostro, Latitude, OptiPlex, and Precision business models, starting later this year, according to an official blog entry.

So what does this mean for VARs? Well, Dell and Microsoft are now essentially competing with consumer-grade cloud storage vendors like Dropbox thanks to the inclusion of Windows Live Mesh, which appears to be a bare-bones file syncing and storage utility that lives on the desktop. It may not be able to compete on features, but the cloud storage upsell gets a little harder if customers already have something basic built-in.

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