Windows Live Messenger

Published 22 June 6 10:6 AM | Ramon Smits
Windows Live Messenger is now available as a public release. But I really don't like a lot of things like:
  • The new interface takes up yet more screen estate and doesn't look good in Vista.
  • The contactlist margins are bigger then the previous lay-out.
  • In the previous version you had the option to see all the users displaypictures in the contactlist.

Thing I do like are:
  • Offline messaging although ICQ had this since it's first release.
  • Extended contact information like dob, names, spous info, etc. just like in outlook.

I got a msn8 invitation from Dennis some time ago and tried to use messenger plus! with msn8 but this didn't work. An msn8 (live messenger) compatible version should have been release a week ago or something but it is now scheduled for this saturday. I hope that it will have all features from the previous msn 7.5 version and maybe even a couple of more cool extensions. I really like:
  • the auto-response
  • the (un)block a group
  • tabbed messaging
  • sound extensions
  • the /me switch
  • the word replacement filter
  • !IP
  • custom away messages.

Website : MessengerPlus (msn7.x)
Website : MessengerPlusLive (msn8)

Comments

# Dennis van der Stelt said on June 22, 2006 5:39 AM:

Cool, msgpluslive, didn't know that!

# Jan Schreuder said on June 22, 2006 5:47 AM:

MessengerPlus? wasn't that the malware installer? At least, according to Microsoft Anti-Spyware aka Windows Defender.

# Dennis van der Stelt said on June 22, 2006 5:53 AM:

Not anymore. They removed it from the list at some point, due to thousands of signatures of happy MessengerPlus users! :)

However, a warning to Patrick Wellink, be sure to READ THE WIZARD instead of being a smart-ass and just click next-next-finish without reading anything. You'll get some nice extra options if you don't read the setup wizard! :D

# Joris Arts said on June 22, 2006 1:34 PM:

Dennis, that's what you get when you work with MS products all the time. You just get so used to the next next finish routine that you get puzzled by a sudden checkbox :-).