Windows Live Messenger 8.0 Beta

So, thanks to a friend, I got an invite to the Live Messenger 8.0 beta. After a quick download, I immediately logged in. The first thing I noticed about the new Messenger is that seeing all of my online contacts was difficult due to the reduced size of the buddy list window. There are so many features that actually seeing your buddies was obviously given a reduced priority, an odd choice for an IM program. A good 1/4 of the interface was given to displaying my name, my picture, and a link that lets me customize my online message. Another 1/4 is given to the "MSN Video" feature, which, by the way, doesn’t work if Firefox is your default browser — it just opens a tab to a page suggesting that you download Internet Explorer 6. It must be awfully hard to write code that knows to make sure that when you click "Play Video," this needs to open up an IE window. In fact, Messenger is all about pimping Microsoft products. You can turn on a "What I’m Listening To" feature that will display info about what music you are listening to in your Windows Media Player. There’s an icon that links you to your Hotmail or MSN mail account. Another icon takes you to your Spaces account.

There is a nice feature called "Sharing Folders" where you can automatically share out content that other Messenger buddies can access. A message pops up when you turn this feature on reminding you to respect copyright law, which makes me wonder…can you share out your mp3s? Will "someone" be watching this to make sure no one is breaking the law?

But for every nice feature, there is an annoyance. Like why, WHY!!!, are there still buttons on the left that are nothing more than ads for other websites (Ebay, Match.com, MSNBC, Rhapsody, MSN, Xbox)? These ads just take up space and frankly, give no value to me as an IM user. I’m not clicking them…ever. I can change their order, but I cannot remove them. Ugh.

Back to nice features: hovering your mouse arrow over a contact displays some helpful buttons - you can click to IM, start a voice call, start a video chat session, or start sharing your folders with them.

So, it’s a mixed review from me. Some good stuff, some bad. Overall, I like it better than MSN Messenger, but I’m not ditching Trillian Pro for it. Maybe I’m just not a Microsoft girl…but you guys knew that already, didn’t you?