The
beta for the refreshed (as opposed to new)
messenger is out. You can
grab it here, or you can read below and make
an informed choice. First off the download
is preety fat at 18mb and among others it
promises
-
Improved performance (yay). This is hard
to believe and harder to measure but
still..
-
Greater compatibility with Yahoo! .
Previously you could add your contacts
and send each other emoticons that were
mutual for the two services.
-
Security via OneCare.
Microsoft has been
taking this seriously lately, bordering
a psychosis with security. In
Messenger 8 (aka Live) you
couldn't send certain files to your
contacts unless you had an antivirus
that could scan them. I suggest Avast
which is both free and efficient.
Download Now
So
you go on about the installation and you hit
this:
After that in Vista you get a UAC, and then
wait while files are copied and then sure
enough you're done.
This
summarizes the new way in which
Windows Live apps
wave 2 are deployed. They are also grouped
in your start menu and supposedly updates
are automatically pushed to you. It is clear
that Microsoft is aiming
at making desktop tools for the Web 2.0
world. Applications that are ocassionaly
disconnected from the cloud and click in the
underused MSN legacy.
It
sure enough fit's my style. I prefer
dragging images from my desktop to a contact
than clicking "Find file.." and looking for
something I already know is there.
You
can see that the changes are primarily
aesthetic in nature. Nothing radical, just
moving the look and feel more towards Vista.
For those who may ask, in order to show you
contacts this way in the current
messenger you can go to the up-down
arrows button and select 'Show details".
The
messaging window has also been refreshed.
You can see that the other-party typing
notification has been moved between the
typing area and the history, this is both
good cause it saves you eye movement and
quite insignificant too.
A
very welcome change is the ability to
quickly change your current image.
Microsoft provides some animated
ones in flash, which are mostly ads (like
Xmen and Fantastic 4) and a history of your
chosen ones.
Take
care not to flame me on this one. It can be
found on some builds of the live
messenger and is missing on
others. It's quite hard to discern which
ones really.
A
glaring omission is the inability of the ink
panel to recognize shapes, which is sad sad
sad. To try out this feature check out this
plugin for the Live Writer.
Finally it doesn't fix a long time nuisanse
of mine, I always believed that the space
you are given or set manually for text and
ink should be different and that the app
should remember it. Just remember where I
put the slider damnit !
The
file transfer dialog is creepier now. This
is good (tm). I recently had a linux using
friend bitch about how insecure
Windows is. The proof was that his
next office colleauge caught a virus via the
Messenger.
Well
it turned out that the received a link,
clicked it and then when prompted with a web
page dialog looking like a Windows
logon, she typed in her credentials. Then
she downloaded a piece of software and ran
it.
It's
true ! And she's a Computer Science MSc !
The
folder sharing facility is under a lockdown
too now. What's different is that if you
antivirus can't handle this type of
monitoring Microsoft will
offer a completely free version of Onecare
for this purpose exactly. I think it used to
be a trial that you got.
The
good side is that OneCare AV is extremely
light. The bad is that apparently it isn't
very efficient at catching viruses anyway. I
guess they could still focus on the attack
du jour and be good at it.
Overall I really like where the live
apps are going. While each one separately
seems largely incosequential, ensemble they
make a good package. It is nice to have
applications that click on the Internet or
consume online services, but provide the
familiar feeling and quick response of a
desktop app.
What
I don't like about Live
though is the odour of Windows
95 it gives off. Everything seems tied in
with other Live products
and certainly a complete installer will
appear someday. Even the points of
interoperability (exproting contacts to
Google) are carefully studied. They are
there so they can use the interoperability
buzzword, but they only exist in point where
MS is sure they have nothing to loose.
In
other words, is there a way to migrate to
Yahoo! Messenger easily ?
No there isn't, and that's propably cause a
super flashy version of it is coming our
way. One built for Windows
Presentation Foundation all the way. And boy
does it look good.
Download Now