Pros & Cons
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- Beautiful interface.
- Huge number of worldwide users.
- Decent video calling.
- IMs you send can benefit charities.
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- Can't access AIM users.
Windows Live Messenger (Wave 3) beta Specs
| Free: | Yes |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows Vista |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows XP |
| Type: | Business |
| Type: | Personal |
| Type: | Professional |
Known by a confusing array of names—MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger, Live Messenger—Microsoft's client is the most popular instant-messaging service and application in the world, except in the U.S., where AIM still leads. Microsoft is doing away with the oversupply of versions and moving everyone to Live Messenger with the coming upgrade. The latest version also sports a new look, integration with the
To obtain and set up Messenger, you need to sign in to Windows Live with a Windows Live ID (Hotmail or MSN log-in credentials work), then use the same unified downloader/installer that gets you Live Mail and the rest of the suite. You can select just the components you want to install, and you can remove components later by running the installer and unchecking them. During setup (or after) you can sign up with Live Messenger's unique i'm Initiative, which donates a small portion of Microsoft's advertising revenue to a charitable cause each time you send a message (the donations total nearly $2 million so far). You can choose from ten organizations, including the American Red Cross, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the Sierra Club, and UNICEF.
Cleaner Interface
The contact window looks nearly identical to that of the earlier version, until you sign in. After, however, if you're moving up from a previous Messenger version, you'll notice that the clients list contacts differently. The familiar Available and Offline categories now come after Favorites and Groups. I like the special treatment of Favorites, because most of us have just a few top IM pals, and this lets you quickly see if they're online and start messaging.
The next major change in the contact list is the addition of a "What's new" section. This social-networky feature ties in with your Windows Live Home page: Status updates entered in either place will be visible in the other. They're also visible to all contacts you've invited to your network. Back and forward arrows let you scroll through your network's latest updates, and the names of people whose status has been updated link back to their profile pages.
Microsoft has also cleaned up the layout: The link icons, which lead to other Microsoft services and advertisers, have moved from the left edge of the interface to the bottom of the window, and, better still, you can turn them off. The top icon bar for Shared folders, Spaces, and the newsy Live Today mini Web page have disappeared completely. Live Today still pops up when you start Messenger, but can also be disabled. Only three items remain at the top of the buddy window: a mail icon showing how many unread messages you have, the area where you can indicate your status, and your user icon (the last two of which you can change with a click).
Not only is the contact window cleaner (you can turn off the status indicator and, as noted earlier, the marketing buttons), it's more customizable. You have a choice of three icon sizes for contacts, and you can choose a larger size for Favorites than for other contacts. A clever visual tip for skinning your client shows up when you hover the mouse pointer over the window's header. The corner peels down, revealing a paintbrush icon. Clicking on the icon brings up the "Change your scene" dialog, which lets you choose from eight preset images or use your own for the background. These are much richer options than the simple color choices the previous version of the client gave. And the customization isn't only visual: You can pick from 11 signature sounds your contacts will hear when you sign on, such as an alien, a Paris café, and a gong. You can also upload your own sound clip.
AIM, too, lets you change your presence-announcing sound, but in all, Live Messenger offers a much more spacious, customizable design than that of the U.S. market leader's latest client. AIM is characterized by screaming ads on top that overshadow the cramped area for your contact list—which should be a main focus. And while AIM lets you use your own picture for your chat image, Live Messenger breaks new ground in this area, letting you easily record a webcam video not only for your IM image but for your winks, which can now actually show you winking. That's pretty cool.—
Chat Windows, Photo Sharing
And if that's not enough of a personal touch, Live Messenger, unlike any other major IM software, lets you "handwrite" in the chat window using whatever pointing device you have—a mouse, a trackpad, or a tablet. As with the other big IM clients, this one lets you change the background of your chat window and have PC-to-PC video and voice calls. For calling external phone lines, though, Yahoo Messenger has an easier setup.
Photo-sharing is a hot new feature in Live Messenger. Selecting a prominent picture icon in the top left of the chat window expands the window to display images. The pictures appear on top, in the largest section, and either person in a chat can upload or use drag-and-drop to place images there. When the mouse is over the large image, arrows show up to let you move back and forth, and thumbnails of the previous and next are shown.
Either party in the conversation can change the picture being viewed by both people. AIM, on the other hand, uses a separate image window, so your conversation isn't as accessible, and keeping viewing in sync with the other person is optional, via a thumbnail. Yahoo Messenger both keeps the pictures in the same window as chat and follows AIM's thumbnail method of letting you see what the other chatter is looking at. In all, Live Messenger does a nicer job of presentation, letting you keep your IM wallpaper behind the pictures.
You'll also find a couple of nifty capabilities that actually live outside the Messenger client: the new Web-based version and the Facebook application. For the first time, you can access Messenger from both the new
Though there's no link for the beta Facebook app I looked at, you can find it at apps.facebook.com/windowslivemessenger. The applet appears discreetly below your Friends' thumbnail pictures on the left-hand side of your Facebook Profile page, offering two buttons—in my case, for example, Chat with Michael, and Add Michael to your contacts. You can set it to update your Facebook feed from Messenger, but you can't see your Facebook updates from Live Messenger or on your Live Home page. The Messenger Facebook app is a nice option if you want to escape the confines of Facebook's own cramped IM feature.
While the redesign doesn't make huge changes from the previous version, the collection of small changes makes Windows Live Messenger a very usable, fun application. Special treatment for Favorite contacts is a plus, as is photo sharing, which matches that of any of the competitors. The interface and depth of features, too, match or exceed what's offered by AIM and Yahoo Messenger. And the less-aggressive advertising gives Live Messenger a big advantage over AIM. I like solutions that allow you to interact with all the major IM services, as Trillian and Meebo do, but you lose some options when you go that route, such as status updates, games, and photo sharing. Among the big three IM apps, Windows Live Messenger is my favorite. Though fairly new, the product is mature enough to rate, and it's worth our Editors' Choice.
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Final Thoughts
Windows Live Messenger (Wave 3) beta
Microsoft's instant-messaging client is more feature-rich and more customizable than its main competitors, Yahoo Messenger and AIM, and has a better interface. MSN Messenger gives you access to the world's largest messaging base, and it now adds Web and Facebook clients.