Topic: Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 (aka 2011)

[rant mode]

Anyone tried out the new Messenger yet? It's awful. Simply, mind-bogglingly wrong in pretty much every single way. Seriously, if you're thinking about checking it out before it comes out of beta, don't bother. You can't downgrade. Let's have a look at its new features:

• Contacts window is now a MASSIVE screen-filling brick with more useless information than you ever knew existed on your MSN, rather than the slim sidebar-esque thing. Do you care that your friend Bill just added Alice (who you've never heard of) as a contact on his MSN? No? Well tough luck, you're finding out anyway in massive text. And hey, Chris changed his display picture four times. Isn't that nice to know? You probably recognise this feature as the little bar across the bottom of the current WLM. You probably thought "wow that's dumb" and promptly turned it off. Well now it's occupying about 800*600 pixels of your desktop. ENJOY.

  ** Contacts window can be shrunk back to the normal, sensible size, but it's still considerably chunkier than its predecessor. OH WELL I DIDN'T WANT THAT SCREEN SPACE ANYWAY.

• Do you like being stiff and formal, and request people know you always by your full name? Oh, those silly people with short nicknames being used for their display names, aren't we glad to be rid of those? No, I'm not either, and the total removal of display names is probably the thing that irks me most about WLM2011. It's a first name/last name system all the way now (and screw you if you like to decorate your display name with extra characters or emotes, alphanumeric characters only). I don't want everyone on my contacts list to know my full name, and even for the contacts who know me in real life, I don't want to have to appear so ridiculously formal on a social chat program. I'm not applying for a job, Microsoft, I'm chatting with friends.
• Do you want everyone to know everything you're doing on every social networking site you're on? Conversely (and related to the first point), do you care what Mary just posted on her Facebook? Well like it or not, they're going to know and you're going to find out. ENJOY THAT TOO.
• Thought the advert at the bottom of the contacts window was annoying? Well lucky you, there's now the same kind of ad at the bottom of every convo window too. It can be turned off, but not permanently. It'll reappear as soon as you open another window.
• Talking of contact windows, they're chunkier for no apparent reason too. The minimum possible size is about 300 pixels tall.
• Would your chats be more fulfilling if words were picked seemingly at random, and hyperlinked to a Bing image search of that word? It hyperlinks Windows Live (unfortunately, doesn't link to the dictionary definitions of 'hilariously' or 'incompetent'). It doesn't hyperlink Microsoft. It hyperlinks random pieces of fruit (thanks Messenger, I totally forgot what a pear was for a minute there). I can't even begin to imagine how much brandy was being downed when they held this particular meeting.
• After an eternity of those horrible, somewhat creepy default emoticons, they've finally been replaced. With emoticons that somehow manage to be both more creepy and at least 150% more annoying. There's also more of them. And no, you still can't delete them.

So, that's about everything covered. Your turn to rant. Or tell me I'm wrong and Messenger 2011 is the greatest software ever created. If you've not tried it, take this thread as a dire warning not to.

'k, I'm done.

I use msn more than I should, and would have installed this the moment it was made public. Ty for the heads up duuuuuude.

_{awesome rant, btw}

_{Heh, thanks}

It does have one new feature I like. When you're appearing offline, you can choose to appear online only to certain contacts, which is certainly handy. So that's +1 in its favour.

Wait no, A NEW CHALLENGER APPEARS and promptly snatches that +1 away and tears it up. You know when you link to websites? Well hyperlinks are now redirected to an "EEK YOU'RE TRYING TO VISIT A PART OF THE INTERNET NOT OWNED BY MICROSOFT, WHERE THE ZOMBIES AND THE UNCULTURED ROAM. ARE YOU SURE?" page every single time. And hyperlinks to images? It downloads the entire image straight into the convo. Thanks Microsoft, but I already kind of already knew what the picture looked like given that I was the one hyperlinking to it.

If it's still free I still like it

That really is a +1, I have to block and unblock ppl all the time. Feels wrong.

As for the rest, ouch. Are there any decent alternatives out there that you know of? I've tried a couple and all they do is remove features. >.<

Not that I know of. I'm tempted to ditch MSN and just use eBuddy until someone makes a decent, lightweight 3rd-party client.

Adium is good and simple, but Im not sure if there is a PC version (im on a Mac)

But yeah, sometimes I wonder what the hell Microsoft is thinking.

Adium is great. Zero ads, and it super simple.

This part is particularly inexcusable because Blizzard just went through the same thing and look how much outrage it caused. Great job keeping up with current events MS.

I remember everyone (myself included) saying almost this exact set of sentences about each successive version of Messenger since 6.2. It was true, too.

Oh good! I much preferred them back when they were those little simple pixel art faces in version 5.

...lol

_{Winks. Oh god, Winks.}

I'm pretty glad I don't use MSN much anymore.

@Magi The reason they would force people to use their full names is because they're trying to keep up with Facebook, which set the precedent it seems.

I actually liked each Messenger upgrade up until this one. OK, I didn't like the switch from MSN Messenger to Windows Live Messenger, but that was mostly because it was buggy as hell before it came out of beta. I liked it when it worked.

In my experience, each version of Messenger got more bloated and intrusive than the last. It was only a matter of time before the contact list took up virtually the whole screen lol.

It really makes me wonder why the software needs so many overhauls and updates. There haven't been that many significant improvements since version 7, which IIRC introduced webcam support. Microsoft has forgotten the old adage, "don't break ain't fixed". Or something.