Windows Live Messenger 2009
Thursday, November 13th, 2008 by Jonathan LauWindows Live Messenger 2009 (also known as Windows Live Messenger 14 & WLM 2009) is currently in development and is expected to be released on 10 February 2009. But meanwhile, we got hold of a copy of the beta and tested it out.
The most obvious chance to WLM 2009 is the new interface it has. It’s gone through a facelift and looks much nicer now. In fact, WLM 2009 is the first version of Windows Live Messenger to use the standard window frame on Windows Vista in accordance with the user experience guidelines. However, one problem that I face with this version of WLM is that I no longer can scroll through the contact list with my mouse wheel, which is annoying at times.
In the main contact window, users have the option to choose between viewing a thumbnail of their contact’s display picture or just an icon representing the status of their contacts.
In addition, WLM 2009 also got rid of the redundant status message such as “Out to lunch”, “Be right back” and “In a call”, leaving only the essentials – “Online”, “Busy”, “Away” and “Appear Offline”.
The taskbar icon is also different from the previous versions.
Personal messages containing link will now be turned into a hyperlink and thus will be “clickable”.
Sounds! WLM 2009 also allows you to customise every aspect of what sound you would like to hear!
Now, for the chat window itself. Messages sent and received will be grouped with bullet points by the side. Most of the features here remain the same. Unfortunately, the font colors you can use in WLM 2009 is still limited to that few (16 to be exact).
What happened to sharing folders? I think Microsoft have removed it in the new version.
WLM 2009 also introduced a new feature called “Scenes” which allows you to customise the look and feel of WLM. You may choose from the few defaults or use your own image! Apart from that, animated GIFs are also allowed as contact display pictures!
WLM 2009 also has the ability to stay signed into the application from several computers, known as “Multiple Points of Presence Support”. With this, you can sign in to WLM from more than 1 device. However, from what I understand, both devices must be using WLM 2009 for this to work. When you are signed in from 2 locations, your messages will be mirrored across both computers. Messages sent and received will be shown on both screens.
There are a few features I hoped for that did not come out in this version.
- Ability to block an entire group without having to block each member individually
- More font colors to choose from in the chat window
To sum up this whole post, I feel that WLM 2009 is a great improvement from the current version of Windows Live Messenger.
To try out this version of the beta, you may download the installer straight from Windows Live’s servers.
» Download Windows Live Messenger 2009 Beta (Build 14.0.5027.908)
» Download Windows Live Messenger 2009 Beta (Link to WLM Download Site)
» Download the latest stable version of Windows Live Messenger
November 16th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Wow, cool, not even 2009 yet, but cool.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:35 am
Yeah – my mates have been going on about it for ages… I really wanna download it and install it, but i cant be asked to load my other harddrive. So im stuck with Pidgin :)
November 17th, 2008 at 3:38 am
You should be able to install it if you’re using Windows. What error message did you get? I don’t really get what you mean by “cant be asked to load my other harddrive”. I’ll be happy to help if you let me know more about the problem. (:
November 18th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Maybe you may wish to address the bugs that you have experienced during your use of this beta version? I experienced the following glitches:
1. Unable to view custom emoticons that I added to my conversation, though the user on the receiving end is able to see the emoticon.
2. Volume of login alert sound. A friend of mine has commented that he can’t hear the alert.
3. Email access. Somehow or other, the email button in messenger which usually brings us to our mailbox with a click, now calls up the browser for http://www.msn.com instead.
Oh wells. enough to piss me off to uninstall it after 30 minutes of use.
November 18th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
The only bug I experienced is that im unable to scroll through contact list with mousewheel, if thats considered as a bug.
Clicking the email button always bring me to the inbox, like before, so no problems with that for me.
I agree with you on the volume, some are really quite soft. You could change the audio file to whatever you like though.
For the custom emoticon, its disabled by default. Just go to options -> messages -> show emoticon and show custom emoticon. That should do the trick.
January 26th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
*Sigh*
One of the main reasons I have chosen Windows Live over other IM’s is for the Sharing Folders. My family shares multiple photo’s in batches, and to have to go back to one-file-at-a-time is going to be a pain. Also, this is a wonderful way to recover lost photo’s when an unexpected reformat has to be done…I thought I’d lost some irreplacable pictures when I lost my digital cam memstick, and had recently been forced to reformat…but to my great relief, my sister had them stored in her sharing folder still, so she resynched them back to me…You can’t possibly imagine what that felt like to know they were there, safe in a shared folder still…
I will be hanging on to my older version (WITH sharing folders) for as long as I possibly can…
January 26th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
The newer version has a tool to view photos together. But for file sharing within the internal network, why not use the Windows file sharing?
January 26th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Because I have a LOT of folders, and a LOT of stored info on them, and a bunch of contacts aren’t online at the same time, and file sharing requires that they accept the download. With sharing folders, I can drop something into my moms or sisters folder and it can synch while we talk, or if I drop something into a folder, then go offline, it will synch for them on their end when they log in…or, if one of us has a connection interuption, the file isn’t completely lost and must then be re-added.
It’s the ability to share things with people who don’t necessarily live in the same timezone that makes this feature so desirable…I work graveyard shift a lot, and my sister has small children, so we aren’t often online at the same times…but this way, we are able to still share batches of pictures, where emailing them was killing our inboxes.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:35 am
hi i recently installed it but i am confused about the font,
i chose tahoma size 12 bold but thats not whats coming up, it looks more like century gothic size 14
any ideas how this can be fixed?
March 15th, 2009 at 10:32 am
im having a problem playing thru sound card on the new msn 2009 version… legit one released… its only giving me the option for my mic not stereomix anyone help?
April 3rd, 2009 at 10:32 am
The quality of the info is what keeps me on this site, thanks!