Tag: Windows Live Messenger

Phased Upgrade of Windows Live Messenger 8.x

by
Inf

Hello folks, been a while, ain’t it?

This post will be about Windows Live Messenger – WLM. Call me oldstyle, but I liked the lightness of WLM 8.1. Hadn’t even bothered moving to 8.5.

What do I see today? I cannot connect to WLM because of a forced phased phorsed upgrade instruction from Microsoft to correct a security flaw that had cropped up. Now, I’ve finally decided to upgrade to WLM 2009 and I’ll give you my first impressions.

I think Microsoft has gone haywire. I want to download WLM and what I get is a bloated package of 135MB something with tons of apps that I don’t want. What the hell is that strategy? I refused to comply and searched for a Standalone Installer. Softpedia came to the rescue. The installer there is just WLM in a 24MB package. Much better.

Update: Note you may also need to install other files to get the standalone working, most notably contacts.msi to solve a 80x error message. These, and some info, are available at this MyDigitalLife post.

The installation goes smoothly. Nothing to complain here.

There are some issues with the new WLM 2009 which I don’t particularly like:

  • It’s bloated! 8.1 used to take 15MBish of RAM. 2009 takes 36MB! It’s not terribly bad, but I still like my applications slim.
  • The interface is weird. I’ve been taught that the eye reads from left to right. What the display pictures are doing in the left instead of the right is beyond my understanding. I’d think that the chat text is more important than the display pictures. That’s not what MS thinks apparently. Good thing is, you can hide the display pics like before.
  • Whenever I open any menu, there’s a lag where my PC freezes for a bit. I don’t know if it’s just me, or for everyone else too.

The good points are:

  • Probably more secured.
  • More customizable, specially for the layout and contact list. E.g. The size of the display pictures can be changed in the list.
  • Reworked color schemes. The color frames around the display pictures indicating status is a good idea.
  • Generally more organized and pleasing to the eye.
  • The interface, despite some weird points, is better. Moving the emoticons and other icons down the conversation box and removal of the send button, etc… saves space.
  • You can now display “What you are listening” and your “personal message” at the same time.
  • You can sign in from multiple computers at the same time, and sign off them remotely.

Most things are already updated to work with WLM 2009, like for those of you who use MessengerPlus, it’s already up to date.

That’s about it. I’m not terribly satisfied with the WLM 2009. I liked the 8.1 interface best, but I am forced to use 2009. Let’s hope it’s as good as 8.1.

Your views on this, if you use WLM?

Spice up your live messenger

by
Guru

We can’t go around without having a nice chit chat. Online, Instant Messaging has bridged this gap. Google it and these will be endless lists of services providing Instant Messaging services; some for free, others for a low price that we often call premium. Without doubt we must all have heard of MSN or Windows Live Messenger; the most used free service from Microsoft. Today I will try to pave a path from a simple to a more customised Live Messenger.

What you will need?:

  1. Windows Live Messenger
  2. A-Patch
  3. Live Messenger Plus

If you don’t have a “passport.net” account head over there and signup for one. Remember you can use any email address for this purpose. Preferably, one from Google, Gmail will do.

After having downloaded Windows Live Messenger, which is a freeware, install it into your computer(s). This is quite easy, just follow the steps in the wizard. 🙂 Now, you can sign in and start chatting right away!!! But will you be doing it? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. If you are reading this it must be out of curiosity or for satisfying your needs. 😛

I will be proceeding with patching Windows Live Messenger first. Launch the downloaded patch (A-Patch) and you will be asked to tick what you will want to “power up” your “chat world”. 😛 Please note that we would be using windows live messenger 8.1 for our purpose. Personally I removed the ads as they were intruding. (I am not imposing). You can use your common sense and your requirements to tick they various possibilities available for customisation. You may like to play around with he nudge, remove the limit 😉

I can now say we have a “cleaner” live messenger as you wanted it to be. If you have not yet downloaded Live Messenger Plus do so now. It allows us to extends Live Messenger 2 ways; plugins and skins. Plugins allowing us to add on more options and automating some processes. In addition you can code plugins to suits your specific needs. Quite handy? Skins gives you the opportunity to dress up Windows Live Messenger to your taste.

Here are some of my favourite plugins that you may like to try:

  • Display Picture Changer – Allows you to have a “dynamic” like display picture. It scrolls through a set of picture and changes your display picture for a set time period.
  • Linked Chats – Allows you to share what your are chatting with friends. It is a convenient way over the traditional copy and paste.
  • LinkSaver – You often receive links from your contacts. Configure it to save them into a file directly. Thus, no need to ask again if you missed it or do not have history to revert to.
  • ReduceMem -You can often witness the memory consumption of WLM, with ReduceMem you can reduce if many folds. I have not tested it well but it seems that it works miracles.

This is a small list but keep tuning I will write more. It is a post after months of no writing. Thanks for your readership. I am back.